Sidelines
by Super Chocolate Bear
Summary: A lot happened while Gordon Freeman was away...
1. Day One

Disclaimer: Neither BlindAcquiescence or Super Chocolate Bear own _Half-Life. _They just like it a whole lot.

_**Sidelines**_

_**Day One by BlindAcquiescence**_

"Do you think it wise, Calhoun, that we stop here?"

Rosenberg tugged at his tie until it loosened slightly. Sitting in the passenger seat of the SUV, the former employee of the Black Mesa Research Facility wasn't looking in his best shape ever. His lab coat was ripped and torn, his pants stained with blood, his as well as others. His fellow scientists, Simmons and Walter, looked no better. Walter had used part of his lab coat for a tunicate that was now wrapped around Simmons' arm, an improvised sling keeping it in place. Walter's blue business shirt was caked in dirt, his tie long gone.

Barney Calhoun leaned his weary head against the steering wheel. He sighed and shrugged his shoulders, feeling the grimy clothing, stained in sweat and alien blood, slide uncomfortably against his skin.

"Unless you've got a better idea." His eyes flickered to the gas gauge; it's needle dipping far below the "E" symbol. "We haven't got any gas, and I'm fresh out of cash. Didn't think I'd be going on a road trip today." He sourly remarked.

Rosenberg rubbed the weariness out of his eyes and looked again at the motel Calhoun had chosen to stop at. Dust crawled across the parking lot; the neon sign above the office had the words "Vacancy" lit. In the middle of nowhere, in a town choking on the sands of the New Mexican desert, the motel was probably as good a place as any to stop and take a breather.

"Looks like something out of Psycho," Simmons chuckled slightly, his mouth splayed wide in a morphine-induced grin.

Calhoun couldn't help but smile himself. "Alright, I'm going to go inside and get us a room." He pulled the 9mm Beretta 92FS and handed it to Rosenberg. "Just don't shoot yourself in the foot, okay?"

Rosenberg took the pistol and held it in his lap, nodding silently. Shrugging off his Kevlar vest and helmet, Barney opened the door and stepped out into the searing sunlight. He brought a hand up to shield his eyes from the intense light as he walked towards the office.

The door opened with a chime, a small bell ringing annoyingly. The office was empty; a small television sitting in the corner behind a counter with several out-dated and faded brochures advertising this particular circle of hell. Calhoun waited at the counter, tapping his finger impatiently as he watched the small television.

"_Reports are coming in of an accidental explosion in the middle of the New Mexico desert, near Black Mesa. Preliminary reports suggest that a supposedly decommissioned nuclear missile base may have sustained a catastrophic nuclear detonation,"_ a young female reporter in a stylish business suit said as pictures of the blast site were flashed across the screen.

_Jesus_, Barney thought, _we survived that. _

Memories of that frantic drive away from Black Mesa filled his mind. As soon as the eggheads had them teleported out of the facility, they were able to hotwire one of the SUV's, and make a break for it. Barney had the accelerator floored the entire time, racing across the barren terrain, the terrible horrors they'd witnessed becoming less of a threat with each passing mile.

That was until the blast. Barney remembered feeling the heat on the back of his neck before he heard the rest of the men screaming.

"_Don't look into the blast!" _

"_Oh God, they did it, they really did it, those bastards!"_

"_Oh my God we're doomed!"_

The Black Mesa Research Facility had been wiped off the map, along with dozens of people Barney had known, many of them his friends…

_Gordon, buddy, I sure hope you made it out alright…_ But Calhoun's thoughts were interrupted as a greasy old man, looking almost worse than Barney did, stepped out from the back room, a half-eaten sandwich in his dirt-crusted hands. He chewed on a portion of it, not saying a word.

Finally Barney, a frown crossing his face, spoke. "I'd like a room, please." The clerk's expression didn't change in the slightest as he rummaged behind the counter. Pulling out three laminated pieces of paper, he set them in front of Calhoun.

"Which one you want?" They were floor plans for the different sized rooms. Barney didn't bother looking, grabbed one, and pushed it towards the clerk. The man raised his eyebrows at the dismissive action, and set his sandwich down grotesquely on the space in front of Calhoun as he walked to the other wall and grabbed a set of keys off of the wall.

"You're in room 25, end of the walkway out this door," he said, swapping the keys for the sandwich. Calhoun grabbed them and turned to leave. "What do you think 'bout all this?" The clerk asked, motioning to the TV.

"_White House Press Correspondent Dana Perini has issued the following statement: 'The White House is currently investigating what has been dubbed the 'Black Mesa Incident' and, as of yet, has no definitive answer, though the possibility of terrorism has not been ruled out.'_ The reporter set the piece of paper with the statement down, Barney saw the clerk smirk and make a masturbatory gesture. _"Recently released files under the Freedom of Information Act have indicated that the Black Mesa facility, after it's offensive abilities had been withdrawn, was used for the decommissioning of unused nuclear warheads. Could it be that during one of these routine procedures, something went terribly wrong? Our correspondent in Chicago has more on that possibility…"_

"Goddamn Taliban, or Al-Qaeda." The clerk slammed his hand on the counter. "Or maybe it was the Chinese, those sneaky bastards." Barney didn't bother responding. The clerk looked him over. "You look like you had a rough day, pal."

Barney sighed and turned to leave. "You don't know the half of it."

* * *

"…That's the safety, and this, this button you push to eject the clip when it's spent." Rosenberg thumbed both buttons, and the black, gunmetal clip slid out the bottom of the pistol, hitting the bed with a dull _thunk._ Barney smiled slightly. "That's it." Rosenberg pointed the pistol around the room in an action-hero-esque manner. Barney ducked instinctively as the barrel swept by him. "Whoa there Rambo! There's still a live round in the chamber!" Rosenberg immediately safetied the weapon and handed it gingerly to Calhoun.

"My apologies." His face was bright red.

"It's fine, you're doing better already." Barney slammed the clip back in and checked the action. Tucking it into his holster, he fished through the duffel bag at the foot of the bed. Pulling out another holster, a replica of the pistol he carried tucked inside, he handed it to Rosenberg. "Like I said before, just don't shoot yourself in the foot." The scientist stared in disbelief at the weapon presented to him.

"Do you really think all this is necessary?" Walter whined from the other side of the room, sat up on one of the beds. "The facility is gone, do you really think there's any need for you to teach us how to fire those damned things?"

Barney turned to Walter, his lips drawn tight. "Look, those soldiers hunting us were sent by our _own_ government. Do you really think that they're going to stop looking for us?" Barney spat. "They'll kill us for what we know!"

"That's absurd. Once we've spoken with the president, explained to him the situation-"

Barney cut the man off. "I saw my _friends_ gunned down by those death squads, people executed for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and you're going to sit here and tell me-"

"You're being paranoid!" Walter yelled, standing up from the bed and meeting the former security guard face-to-face. "You guards are all the same, all gung-ho, with no respect for reason or log-"

Calhoun took a step forward, as if to strike Walter. "Hey pal, I saved your goddamn _life_, if you haven't already forgotten." In a flash Rosenberg was in between the two men.

"Gentlemen please! Right now we need to rest and regroup, we don't have time to be at each other's throats!" There was silence for a moment, and Calhoun heard the sound of a fifth, unfamiliar voice. Turning, he saw that Simmons had turned the television on.

Another reporter, an older man in a gray suit, stood shielding himself against gale-force winds. The sky behind him was dark and brooding, and Barney half-expected him to be reporting from the middle of a hurricane.

Over the roaring wind, the men could barely make out what the reporter was screaming._ "This is Ryan Sellers, reporting from Black Mesa, New Mexico. Government vehicles stopped our reporting van forty miles south of the facility, threatening us with deadly force if we didn't turn back…_" An arrogant smile crossed his face. _"But this reporter _always_ gets his story! We're standing on an outcropping, a cliff twenty miles east of what experts are dubbing 'Ground Zero'. Now I've been told there's minimal fallout, something to do with radiation dampening technology that decommissioning facilities use-" _

Barney turned to Rosenberg, who nodded numbly.

"_-so hopefully this scoop won't cost me my future children."_ The reporter grinned at what he thought must have been a hilarious joke. The camera shifted as several small pieces of debris flew by. Ryan Sellers ducked, screaming several profanities not fit for television.

"_From where we're currently standing, we can't see anything resembling the complex we've been told once existed here. But what we want to show you is something much more terrifying, much more alien than what _other_ news networks have been able to cover! Ladies and gentlemen…"_ Ryan seemed at a loss for words to mark the momentous occasion, and simply motioned for his cameraman to look to his left. As the scene shifted all four men in the tiny, cramped motel room cursed.

The clouds were black as soot, swirling around like a manic tornado, a giant red eye in the centre gazing angrily down at the Earth.

"Christ…" Simmons muttered. Suddenly the room was alive with arguments as the three scientists threw theories back and forth as to the nature of the giant storm.

"I never thought it was possible…" Walter moaned.

Simmons interrupted him. "Those boys in the Applied Quantum labs predicted it might happen, but never on this kind of scale-

"Those ones we opened up in the Lambda complex were nothing compared to this-"

"No, no this can't be!" Rosenberg moaned. "Dr. Green and Dr. Cross were successful in initiating the Resonance Reversal! I talked them through the procedure myself!" He cradled his head in his hands as he sat on the bed, his legs losing feeling.

"Doc, what the hell is going on?" Barney asked, not bothering to hide the fear in his voice.

"The satellite they launched, the one that would initiate the Resonance Reversal, it didn't perform like we planned! It was suppose to suppress the cross-dimensional rift growth. It should have slowed it to a halt, then cause the singularity to collapse in on itself!"

"English, please," Calhoun growled.

"What I mean is…" Rosenberg said quietly. "That the portal we opened, the one to Xen. We thought we closed it." Calhoun thought he could hear the man weeping behind the hands covering his face. "But… but it's _still open._"

Barney turned back to the television and watched as the reporter, who despite screaming into the microphone, could not be heard. He turned again to the giant portal, the clouds trembling and green lightning sparking across the great black sky until a clap was heard, and the whole scene disappeared in a blaze of white, the transmission cutting to static.

"So those…_things_… that came through it…"

Rosenberg lifted his head, puffy red eyes and damp cheeks indeed proving he had been sobbing, and whispered, "Aren't done with us yet…"

* * *

Barney sat in the old lounge chair in the corner of the room. Outside crickets chirped, but in the distance, thunder sounded. He felt goose bumps prickle across his grimy skin. That wasn't a normal storm brewing…

He couldn't sleep. Funny, figuring the last thirty-six hours of his life he had spent wishing all of this were just a bad dream. He'd like nothing more to fall asleep and wake up, back in the Sector C Dormitories…

The other men were asleep, and Calhoun envied them. Simmons snored as the last of the morphine coursed through his system. He'd be a bitch to deal with tomorrow. Walter and Rosenberg had stayed up, both scribbling down nonsensical equations and half-theories about what the hell was going on. Finally Walter had given up, and crawled into bed next to Simmons. Rosenberg almost immediately collapsed, Barney assumed from total exhaustion.

The man had been different after that last television report. Hell, they were all different. They thought they were out of the woods, but now it seemed those demons they all had fought so hard to rid themselves of were coming back, and in force. But Rosenberg took it especially hard. He had led those two poor women, Drs Colette Green and Gina Cross, into the depths of hell to finish this thing, and now it seems they might have died for nothing.

They'd all died for nothing. Barney shut his eyes tightly. _No_, he thought,_ not Gordon. He made it out. He's smart; he would have found a way to the surface, to the Lambda labs like Rosenberg had hinted at in the elevator. He would have used the teleporters to get out…right?_ The scientist, on their descent down into the older teleportation labs, had offhandedly mentioned that Freeman had single-handedly waged a war across the facility, hoping to make it to the Lambda labs, and end this whole goddamnedable mess.

_And Lauren_, Barney inwardly groaned, _what the hell must she think?_ Barney lifted his left hand, closely to his face in the dim light of the dark room, and stared at his engagement ring. His girlfriend of three years and fiancée of four months, they had been forced apart as he worked his way up in the Black Mesa security division. She had been out several times to the facility to see him, and made it a duty to berate his chosen line of work. He loved her, with all his heart, which was why he took the job. With a high-paying government salary, he could afford that house they always wanted, the one on Spooner Street, with the big lawn for Rex to play in, and the white fence…

"Get a hold of yourself, buddy," Calhoun whispered to himself. Lauren was okay, she was living with her mother until Calhoun had enough to put a down payment on the house; she was safe in San Francisco. The security guard marvelled at his luck, though, as Lauren had been visiting just a week prior to this whole foul thing.

Grabbing the TV remote, Barney turned the television on to take his mind off the present situation. But no matter how many times he switched the channel, it was always the same thing.

"_Reports of strange electrical storms-"_

"_Religious officials are calling it 'Judgment', as several senior Republican senators and congressmen have openly discussed the possibility of 'divine retribution for our national short-comings'-"_

"…_We've…we've just lost contact with our reporter in the field-"_

Barney stopped flipping channels, as he saw the ubiquitous circular symbol representing the Aperture Science Corporation in the background of a news report. Barney turned the volume up.

"…_As of yet,"_ The reporter droned. _"None of the calls made to either the public relations office or the board of directors own private line have been returned. Aperture Science, supposed rival of the recently publicized Black Mesa Research Facility, has had a suspicious eye cast upon it in light of recent events. The sudden silence from Aperture and its subsidiaries has called into question whether or not it had anything to do with what some are calling the biggest accident in scientific history…"_

Aperture Science? Weren't those the weirdoes that were going around trying to buy out Black Mesa personnel? Barney distinctly remembered that ominous letter Gordon had received just weeks ago, offering him a competitive salary but strangely quoting a CV that the quiet scientist didn't remember ever sending them.

Calhoun sighed and turned the television off. Getting up, he walked outside, telling himself he needed some air. Outside the night air was warm; it felt heavy against his chest as he walked out towards the parked SUV. Checking inside, he rummaged through the glove box and looked inside the cup holders, until…

"Gotcha." He grinned triumphantly. He fished the quarters out of the cup holder, and pocketed them. Turning to look over his shoulder, he found himself alone in the darkened parking lot. He pulled the Beretta out of his waistband and checked its action again, quietly sliding it back underneath his untucked shirt. Making his way across the parking lot, and around to the back of the office, he saw what he had been searching for.

Underneath a lone street light on the deserted highway road, he saw the blue telephone booth. Calhoun looked around nervously, carefully trying not to look suspicious. Sliding into the cramped booth, he pulled the receiver off the hook and dialled the number.

'_Please insert…"_ the automated voice hesitated as it calculated the long-distance cost of the call. Barney tapped his hand impatiently on the top of the phone box, all the while staring at the smudged ring on his finger. _"…one dollar to complete this phone call."_ Barney parcelled out the quarters and slid them into the box.

The phone began ringing, his heart thumping in time with the rings. Finally he heard a click, and someone muttered annoyingly. _"H…hello?"_

In the background he could hear another, more angry voice.

"_Who the hell is calling at 3 am?"_

"Lauren?" Calhoun barely was able to utter the name.

"_Jesus… _Barney?_ Barney! Mom it's Barney! Baby…"_ Lauren began crying. _"I've been watching the news… I… I thought you were dead…We didn't know what was…"_ Her sobbing obscured the rest.

"Honey, honey." Barney reassured her. "It's okay, everything's okay, I'm fine. Are you okay?"

Lauren stopped crying, though hiccups interrupted her. _"Yeah… yeah, me and mom are fine. Everyone's talking about what's happening. What's going on, Barney? The whole city is going mad, the governor is talking about declaring marshal law…"_

"I don't know what's going on. But I'm with people who might know how to stop it." Barney looked out of the booth, searching for ghosts in the darkness, figures that might spring out of the shadows and finish what the aliens had already started.

"_Barney… where are you?" _

Then he heard it. But it wasn't outside; it was on the other line, almost imperceptible, but there. An audible _click_, like someone picking up another phone.

But Lauren's mother only had _one_ phone in the house.

The government was tapping their line, trying to trace his call. Barney had to think fast.

"Lauren, I love you, you know that right?"

She sounded confused. _"I…where are you? Barney, tell me where you are, we'll come get you."_

"I love you, baby."

"_I love you too, but…"_

"They you need to understand I can't tell you where I am." And with that, he slammed the phone down on the receiver. Hugging the phone box, Barney began to slowly weep.

* * *

The light that crept through the blinds hurt Barney's eyes. He strained to move his head away, but the rising sun followed his movements. He lay there in bed, his eyes half-closed, listening to the others wake up and mill about the room.

Simmons turned the TV on, but instead of the barrage of news reports, only static filled the screen.

"What's the news?" He heard himself ask.

"Nothing good," Walter snapped.

"The electro-static discharge must be interrupting the radio waves," Rosenberg said, walking out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist.

"You mean the storm?" Calhoun mumbled. Christ, couldn't they speak English? Rosenberg set to putting his dirty clothes back on and pointed out the window.

"It's getting closer…" Simmons moaned in bed and gingerly poked his arm. Barney rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Standing up, he pulled several of the blinds down and looked out the window.

The storm was just cresting over the horizon. It spread out across it in every direction, threatening to swallow the Earth whole. Green lightning, the kind they had seen on the news, shot down through the clouds and buried itself in the desert floor below.

"Mother of God…" Calhoun mumbled. Simmons groaned again, and Walter went to his side.

"He needs to get to a hospital." He hesitated for a moment. "We all do, we don't know how many rads we were exposed to."

The thought of all that radiation coursing through his body, along with the accumulation of sweat and dirt caused Barney to head for the bathroom.

Stripping down, he stepped into the small shower and let the ice-cold water drip down his body. Though the temperature left something to be desired, the water felt wonderful. Looking down at his exposed body, Barney saw the scars of two days of fighting. He felt a cluster of bruises on his abdomen and winced slightly. Several high calibre bullets had impacted in his armour, keepsakes from those Marines. A circular scar, ringed with small gashes sat on his left thigh, where a bullsquid had tried to make a meal out of him. But the worst…

A hand gingerly felt the burn along his back, a consequence of letting one of those electricity aliens get the drop on him. Walters had treated it with anti-septic and a burn cream, but it still hurt like a bitch.

Suddenly a violent earthquake rocked the bathroom. Cursing, Calhoun half-jumped, half-fell out of the shower. Throwing on his pants and shirt, he ran into the bedroom, only to find it empty with the front door hanging open.

"Holy crap, guys," He said walking out, finding the men standing just outside the door. "What the heck do you think caused that earthquake…" Barney stopped in his tracks as he saw what the three men were staring in horror at. The storm had neared them much faster than they thought. Less than a mile off, lightning pounded the ground mercilessly.

"My word…" Rosenberg whispered.

"The Resonance distortion is causing multiple rifts to occur," Walter quietly observed.

"We need to leave," Barney said, taking his eyes off the impending storm. "We need to leave _now_."

That's when it hit. It sounded like a shrieking animal, but too high-pitched. The sound travelled across the mesa from the storm, howling loud enough to make the men cover their ears. Barney looked around, and saw several people leave the safety of their motel rooms. Some ran back inside, others ran for their car.

"What's going on?" Barney screamed over the shrieking. Rosenberg turned to Walter for a moment, and the two shared a brief, horrifying glance.

The scientist yelled something inaudible.

"What?" Barney screamed, his voice cracking.

"Magnetic Field Burst!" Rosenberg screamed.

"What the _hell_ does that mean!"

The sound grew louder, and suddenly the air was filled with a blue hue, almost akin to the aurora borealis, which surged through the air wildly.

"Portal Storm!" He heard Rosenberg yell, as the force of the gale threw the men off their feet. The wave of blue energy careened past them, throwing Walter against the door, and Simmons through the window. Rosenberg hurtled behind a car, and Barney huddled against the wall.

The energy wave screamed through the atmosphere, and when it hit the motel, it ploughed through it with ease. Cars were overturned, smashing into one another, the Black Mesa SUV itself flung through the air like a toy.

Then, above the sound of the storm, Calhoun could hear the distinct sound of rending metal. Looking up, he watched as the nearby radio tower bent like grain in the wind against the force of the energy. When it finally became too much for it to structurally handle, there was a loud _pop_ as the tower was ripped apart by the wave and fell on top of the office, crushing it.

The shrieking was so loud, Barney was sure he was going to go deaf. The ringing in is head, due in part to the high pitched wailing and the bump he sustained whilst being thrown against the wall, was all he could hear as the storm finally subsided.

Pushing himself up, he felt his hands push into broken glass. Wincing in pain, Calhoun tried to stand, shaking his head and checking for blood. Finally the ringing subsided, and he could hear the moans.

"Oh God, Simmons!" He heard Walter cry. The scientist was crouched next to his friend, who lay dead underneath the broken window. What the aliens had started, the portal storms had finished. "One of the greatest minds of his generation!" Walter wailed.

Dusting himself off, Barney looked for Dr. Rosenberg, and found the scientist lying inert next to the car. Barney shook him; valiantly try to wake the man. "Come on, doc, don't crap out on me now!"

The scientist finally came to, rubbing the back of his head.

"Oh God, Calhoun, what have we _done?_" Were his only words.

"You going to be okay, doc?" He nodded yes, and Barney helped him to his feet.

Before Rosenberg could speak, Walter was on top of them, raving like a madman.

"_You_ had to tamper with this. This would never have happened if you and your Entanglement Team hadn't poked its nose in things that shouldn't be meddled with! Now Simmons is dead…" Walter was having an asthma attack as he desperately tried to suck in air. Rosenberg tried to help the man from collapsing.

From off to his left, Barney could hear other people yelling, running out of their rooms to see what had happened. A mother and her two children rushed by them, running for their car, bags swinging frantically in their arms.

"What the hell is going on?" A man screamed into his cell phone as he kicked the over-turned heap of his expensive sports car. But all of that was drowned out by the scream of a young girl. Barney felt for his pistol, but unfortunately had left it in the room. He looked around and found the source of the scream. The girl couldn't have been older than eight or nine, as she stood next to her parents and pointed out across the parking lot.

"Oh _fuck!"_ Barney yelled. Rosenberg followed his gaze, and uttered something similar.

A Bullsquid, flanked by several headcrabs, crawled across the broken pavement of the motel parking lot. It's tentacles undulating with hunger, it made a beeline for the young girl and her parents, who themselves were now shrieking with terror and marshalling their daughter into their room.

Barney turned to Rosenberg. "Get Walter to a car, any car, get it hotwired, _now_."

His companion looked confused. "But what about you?"

But Barney was already rushing past him and into their room.

_It's time to act, Calhoun. Time to show the world, and your friends, that you give a damn, that you're no coward._ He told himself. He felt his pulse quicken. _Lauren, I'm coming for you, I promise._

Rosenberg threw Walter into the backseat of the Jeep parked at the end of the lot. Over the winds of the approaching storm, he could hear screams and shots as the panicked civilians desperately tried to defend themselves against the otherworldly creatures. Ripping the bottom out of the steering column, he frantically set about starting the car.

Gunshots rang out in the storm, and Rosenberg feared someone might end up accidentally shooting him. He ducked down, but slowly peeked up over the dashboard.

And saw Barney Calhoun. Dressed in his uniform and Kevlar vest like some knight in battered armour, the former security guard took aim and finished off the creatures scratching at the motel room doors. His clip empty, he ejected it smoothly and seamlessly slapped another one in.

A door to his left suddenly fell open as several bloodied bodies, topped with those horrific headcrabs, shambled out. They had only recently become infected, and so they clawed frantically at the pavement, trying to remove the parasites.

He saw Calhoun hesitate, and then bring his pistol to bear. Taking aim, he put a round in each body, leaving them inert.

The bodies stopped moving, and Calhoun looked around for any more. As silence descended on the motel, he felt the tears well up in his eyes. Holstering the pistol, Barney looked out across the battered landscape.

_This is only the beginning, isn't it?_


	2. Day Seven

Disclaimer: We don't own _Half-Life._ If only we did. This would all be canon, like, _right now_.

_**Sidelines**_

_**Day Seven by Super Chocolate Bear**_

It was strange, the thoughts that went through one's head when they had just woken up. Sometimes it would be 'what the hell is that?' or 'not right now, come back later' and occasionally (and embarrassingly) 'how did that get there?'. But right now, all Louis Griggs could think of was how flat his pillow felt. Not that these things usually bothered him that much. But when you were twenty one years old, the little things mattered. Whether the acne had flared up overnight or the hair had decided to become some kind of strange upside-down 'Q' shape.

But right now, it was the pillow. Rolling over in his (still single) bed, Griggs noted from the wallet-shaped lump in his back pocket that he had gone to sleep in his clothes again.

He hated when that happened. Luckily he had taken his shoes off, so that was good. But damn, jeans weren't built for sleeping in. Especially when they had the smell of old cigarettes and spilt beer on them.

"Lou? Are you planning on getting up before lunch?"

Ah. His ever present mom. Was it completely impossible for her to be out _once_, just so Griggs could wake up in the morning and pretend he wasn't twenty one years old and living with his mother? Not that there was anything wrong with that, or so he had been told; but still. Living. With. His. Mother.

"Lou?"

Scrunching up his face, Griggs rolled over and buried his face in his flat pillow.

"I'll get up in a minute," he shouted, which through the pillow admittedly sounded somewhat like 'Arghumphlargumblarr.'

"What?"

With a loud groan, Griggs lifted his head, feeling his unshaven chin scraping against the pillow. "I said 'I'll get up in a minute'."

"It's just there's something on the news I think you should see."

"Why?"

"Well… just come down."

"What is it?"

"It's… hard to explain, really."

"Mom, it's not hard," he moaned, hefting himself out of the bed and up into a sitting position. "Did someone I know die?"

"Louis Steven Griggs, that is a horrible thing to say."

"Okay, sorry. So… natural disaster?"

"…sort of."

Griggs buried his face in his hands, rubbing eyes as he did so. "How can it be 'sort of' a natural disaster?"

"Well it-" he could hear the indignant sigh from where he was upstairs, which was quite an accomplishment on her part. "Look, I'm not going to relay the whole thing to you from downstairs. Just come down and get some breakfast."

"'Just come down and get some breakfast'," he muttered, doing a whiny impression of his mother while flapping his hand around like a duck's beak.

"Less cheek, young man."

She was uncanny sometimes. Whenever he was asking her to fetch something from the kitchen it was like she was in a soundproof booth. But if you were saying something negative about her or cussing or anything she didn't approve of… damn, she was like Superman.

After tossing his wallet back on the bed (and grumbling when it cleared the bed and fell down the other side), Griggs wandered to the bathroom, somewhat reluctant to look in the mirror. Nature was calling pretty insistently, so he took care of that first before inspecting his usually okay visage in the mirror.

He nodded in approval, running his hand over his chin like Indiana Jones contemplating the Golden Idol. After clapping his hands on his cheeks to wake himself up a bit, he headed for the stairs, thundering down them at a fair pace.

"Quieter, please! It's like living-"

"-with an elephant," he finished, speaking with her for the final part of her well rehearsed little speech.

"The fact that you can finish my sentence says something about how many times I've had to tell you, doesn't it?"

Griggs didn't want to bother answering, so he kicked his shoes off beside the front door and wandered into the kitchen. Stepping on a wet patch with only socks on, he let out a groan.

"What did you spill?"

"Nothing mom, jeez…"

"Was it the milk?"

"I didn't _spill anything_!"

"All right, no need to get snippy."

Biting back the instinctive response boiling in his throat, Griggs yanked a cupboard door open, retrieving the only box of sugary cereal he could ever convince his mom to buy. It took him a few minutes to get a spoon and pour some lovely cold milk all over his cereal (after checking to see if it had expired or not, of course). That done, he wandered in a half-asleep daze to the living room, where his mother sat on the sofa, mug of coffee clutched between her hands.

"Try not to spill any of it," she said, never taking her eyes of the TV.

Griggs eyes flashed over the screen before he concentrated on the bowl in his hand. A news channel. Great.

"You got me up for the news?" he muttered, relaxing back into the armchair that sat at an angle from the sofa.

"It's important news," she insisted. "You remember that nuclear explosion in New Mexico a week ago?"

"No."

She continued without pause as though he had never spoken. "And the day after this bright blue flash knocked out everything for miles around?"

"No."

Again, it was as though he hadn't spoken. "And there were all these rumours of monsters and aliens and things like that?"

"No."

He looked at the widescreen TV. He had done everything short of threatening his mother at gunpoint to buy the damn thing. Then again, he had never liked guns. The whole idea of them scared the life out of him, so holding one… the idea made him shudder sometimes.

On the TV, three stuffy men in suits sat around discussing the stock market and shares in some Aperture Science thing. Thrilling stuff, really. Definitely worth being forced out of bed for.

"Well, there are reports of more storms heading out from New Mexico."

He looked at her in mid-munch. "That's why-"

"Chew your food and swallow first."

With a glare, he did so, thinking in retrospect that he probably didn't chew enough as a large lump of sugary snack forced its' way down his throat.

Able to breathe again, he returned to berating his mother. "That's why you woke me up? Bad weather?"

She gave him the usual withered look, as though she were tired of making this point. To be honest, she probably was. "It's current events, Lou. You've got to pay attention to these things or the whole world will pass you by."

"Mom," he groaned, rolling his eyes. "I'm twenty one. The way I figure it, I've got plenty of time to think about current events when I'm older."

"You never know when things can end, Lou."

"Wow, mom, what a cheery thought."

"You know what I mean."

They sat in silence while one of the three men on the TV - a man with almost no hair and thick rimmed glasses - spoke of political ramifications for America, and what the President should be thinking about right now.

"So," Mom said, looking over at him with her customary 'let's be friends' smile. "How was your night out?"

"It was okay," Griggs mumbled, stirring his cereal and watching the soggy shapes swirl around. It beat talking about his sad-sack of a love life with his mom. His _mom. _This couldn't get more embarrassing.

"How did things go with Miranda?"

It was amazing how she could sound concerned and cocky at the same time.

"Could we not talk about it?"

"Oh, I'm sorry honey. She probably wasn't right for you anyway."

He groaned. "Just so you know, that never helps."

Smiling, his mother went to speak again when the TV interrupted her. A male reporter who Griggs vaguely recognised was speaking from… well, he couldn't tell where hell he was. There was just grey, swirling clouds behind him. And not the harmless 'light showers' kind of clouds, either. These were angry, pissed off clouds that looked like they could explode.

"_This is Ryan Sellers, report-" _The sound and picture froze, only occasionally moving forward with screeches and stutters accentuating every movement. Digital static. Lovely stuff.

Finally, Mr Sellers returned.

"_-have gotten worse, and have grown bigger. The wind alone made it almost impossible for us to erect the mobile satellite to send this report. I-"_

Someone from behind the camera seemed to point something out to him, and he turned his head. His head whipped back to the camera, looking horrified as he lurched towards it.

"_The-"_

A wall of bright blue suddenly appeared onscreen, forcing its' way towards the camera until, finally, the picture vanished.

The news anchor's slightly panicked voice came over the blocks of digital mess.

"_Ryan? Ryan? Ryan, are you there?" _He paused for a moment, and the picture returned to the anchorman, who seemed paler than before, even under his orange makeup. _"Well, we seem to have… lost the picture for the moment. We'll do our best to get Ryan back as soon as possible. For now, let's-"_

Griggs had tuned him out, looking to his mother, his cereal forgotten. "Mom, was that the same thing as before?"

She nodded blankly, concerned gaze on the television.

He frowned, forcing himself to watch the screen. How the hell had he managed to ignore something like that? Wasn't this panicking the whole country by now? Hell, he wouldn't be surprised if the rest of the countries in the world were crapping their collective pants right about now.

Turning back to his mother, he opened his mouth to speak again when the anchorman suddenly returned.

"_It appears we have the signal back. Ryan, are you there?"_

The picture changed to some rocky landscape, a tall forest in the distance. The camera was on it's side, and nothing was moving. Aside from the wind, there wasn't much of anything to be heard.

"_Ryan, can you hear me?"_

For an eternity, there was nothing. The silence hung in the air as neither Griggs, his mother or the anchorman dared say anything.

A hand suddenly crashed down on the dusty ground in the distance, just to the left-hand side of the camera. Slowly, and with an agonising moan to boot, someone slowly dragged themselves forward. It wasn't Ryan Sellers. Judging from the cap turned backwards on his head, he was a member of the camera crew. Perhaps the cameraman himself. Whoever he was, he certainly had a destination in mind as he crawled across in full view of the camera.

As his legs reached the halfway point, a puff of dust came up from the ground beneath his limp feet. He didn't seem to notice, but Griggs certainly did. The cameraman moved a little more, and another puff of dust accompanied him. After the third, the ground behind him practically exploded, and the vague shape of something twice the size of a dog and four times as pointy emerged. There was the occasional glimpse of a yellow, pointy limb and a green wing before whatever it was latched onto the cameraman by the ankles.

With a blood-curdling scream that made Griggs' eyes well up, he was dragged back into the ground, scratching and clawing as he went.

The news channel let the picture linger for a few moments longer before returning to the studio. The anchorman, having gone from airbrushed brown to sickly white in the space of a few minutes, was at a loss for words. He patted a stack of papers in front of him, straightening them up in a move clearly more out of habit than a deliberate act.

"_We'll… come back after this."_

It suddenly cut to a soda commercial, the happy smiling people chugging away seeming almost insulting to what the people all around the country had just seen.

His mouth dry, Griggs licked his lips and swallowed hard. Afraid to look, his gaze gradually travelled across the room to where his mother was sitting. Her eyes too, were afraid to leave the television, her hand over her mouth in constant shock.

"…mom?"

His voice was incredibly weak. He cleared his throat.

"Mom? Are you okay?"

She shook her head, almost imperceptibly. "Oh my God…"

It wasn't something he usually did, but he knew it was right at this moment. He set down the bowl of cereal and sat down next to his mother, wrapping his arm around her.

"I know."

"But…" She took a loud sniff. "The storm is spreading, Lou. That's what they said. They said it was spreading out in all directions."

_Spreading?_

He looked to the TV, where an irritated owner tried to get her cat to eat its' food.

So those things could be coming to his house. They could be coming to Miranda's house. To the mall. To Benny's Sandwich Bar. All these little normal things…

Suddenly, the world was all that smaller to Louis Steven Griggs.


	3. Week Four

Disclaimer: We don't own _Half-Life._

_**Sidelines**_

_**Week Four by Super Chocolate Bear**_

His boots crunched against the twigs, branches and plants beneath his feet, a layer of fallen plant life that had been building for countless years. William Sheckley remembered wondering as a kid what you would find if you kept on digging down. Of course, he also remembered his father showing him the correct way to hold a rifle and the best spot to aim for on a deer for the quickest kill (even though he never called it that).

A brisk early morning breeze brushed over his face, and he hunched his shoulders a little. Birds chirped all around him, unseen in the echoing forest that stretched out infinitely in each direction. Not that Sheckley wouldn't be able to find his way back to his tent; years of expert tutelage from his father had seen to an excellent sense of direction and the ability to tell which way was north with nary a thought.

He figured that was why all this 'end of the world' crap wasn't going to affect him all that much. He had clothes, several rifles with plenty of bullets, food everywhere and a nearby stream for cleaning and washing. Not to mention the sun that managed to get pretty damned hot at midday.

Sheckley rubbed his fingers underneath the shoulder strap of his rifle, easing the delicate aching that was starting to come through.

Not that he bought all this 'end of the world' stuff anyway. Sounded like a bunch of nonsense to him. Sure, the reception on his portable TV had cut out, but that happened too many times for him to count since he had moved out here. Didn't mean anything. Nor did the fact that he couldn't get a signal on the radio either. He was just in a bad area. Once he decided to move on, he'd find that it was all some hoax by overeager, show-off college kids or something.

Damned college kids and their pranks.

But strange creatures falling from the sky and digging themselves up from the ground? Storms of bright blue energy that knocked out buildings and electricity? Please.

Didn't matter anyway. Sheckley was far away from it all, and it would be a long time before he would find a reason to go back to civilisation. This life was better than what was waiting for him back at Fossil, anyway. Dead end job at the lumber mill seemed pretty damned pointless to him. As old as he was getting (which wasn't much), he decided that he needed to see the world and _live_ life instead of resting on the old Sheckley tradition.

"_Someday, boy, you'll be doing the same job as me. Just like my father."_

Like hell. Once Dad had passed on, Sheckley hadn't seen much point in staying. He had only gone along with what he was saying out of an urge to make sure his increasingly ill father was happy. He was way better off now.

Something bit him on the neck, and he slapped it irritably. Bringing his hand around, he found it smeared in the brown blood and the corpse of some unknown little bugger.

Yep. Definitely better off here.

A distinctive smear of blood on some leaves ahead of him brought his attention down. Assuming the worst and clutching the strap on his shoulder, Sheckley knelt to inspect the stain. It didn't look too bad; more a drop than anything else. It wasn't necessarily a predator; the animal could just have easily accidentally cut itself on something.

Sheckley pulled the rifle down and checked the bullet was in the chamber. You could never be too careful when it came to your dinner. His stomach growled it's agreement, having been starved for more than a day with nothing but a Hershey bar to go on. Speaking of which…

Thrusting a hand down into his back pocket, Sheckley wrestled with his jeans until he brought up the final morsel of chocolate-y goodness, safely cocooned in the long since opened wrapper. He consumed it like a man starved (which, technically, he almost was) before continuing on, making a concerted effort to be quieter than before.

He walked for about ten minutes, the bloody trail getting thicker and his heart pounding ever louder the more he went on. Some thick bushes eventually blocked his path, the blood leading him underneath. Sheckley eyed the trail suspiciously. He _really _shouldn't be thinking about this. He should just turn around and go back to the tent and try to find something else.

The evil stomach of doom grumbled, almost bowling Sheckley over with it's power.

In he went.

Getting down to the ground and with rifle aimed firmly forward, Sheckley started crawling beneath the bushes.

The leaves made far too much noise as he went underneath, but he didn't hear anything snorting or making any sudden moves. And so, with the assumption that he was safe for now, Sheckley crawled on.

His assumption was wrong.

The first clue was the boot he found at the exit of the bushes. The second was the severed foot _inside _said boot. Following the trail of blood, he found it didn't belong to any animal. A man, looking all too similar to Sheckley's father for his tastes, lay crumpled in the middle of the clearing. He was pretty clearly dead, the sheer volume of blood pooled around him leaving little room for doubt.

And the cause was fairly obvious, too.

Some hideous green and yellow monstrosity crouched over the body, playing with it like a cat with a mouse. With long, yellow pointed arms it nudged the limp corpse one way and the other, looking somewhat disappointed that it didn't want to play anymore.

All Sheckley had wanted was a deer. Now he knew where they had all been disappearing to over the past week.

His breathing was incredibly shallow, and he used all his willpower to keep it as inaudible as possible. So. Maybe that 'end of the world' news wasn't as much crap as Sheckley thought. The thing in front of him looked real enough.

Slowly - oh so _very _slowly - Sheckley started to edge his way back, the temptation to shoot the damn thing dissipating quickly. He had no idea if a bullet would be able to penetrate the hide of the… _thing, _let along kill it. Better to simply leave it alone and get the hell back to civilisation, which had somehow gained back some of it's appeal.

A twig snapped beneath his shuffling knees.

The clicking purr coming from the creature ahead stopped instantly. He could hear the pointed legs thudding along the thick ground. Alien breath brushed past his nose, and he tried not to make a sound, even though the scream burned in his throat.

The thing hissed, and a yellow limb stabbed down directly in front of Sheckley's face, skimming his left cheek and embedding itself in the ground.

_That _earned a scream.

He shot up, uncaring of the way the leaves, twigs and branches scratched and cut his face. Stumbling as he turned, Sheckley turned the fall into an awkward roll before setting off in a full-on sprint through the trees. Heavy walking boots kicked up dead leaves and earth as he went, feet pounding along with his heart as he weaved between the trees.

Finally, feeling as though he were a good, healthy distance away, Sheckley skid to a halt and slammed his back to a particularly thick tree. He squeezed the rifle so tight he thought it may pop in his hands. Breathing heavy and laboured, Sheckley slowly moved his head around the corner, glancing around the suddenly ever so silent forest.

Nothing. His scream alone probably scared the thing away. Letting himself calm down, Sheckley closed his eyes and rested his head back against the thick tree.

Something clicked above him. Opening his eyes, he saw the creature nestled in some branches above his head, twisting it's mouth (which seemed to be separate from the body) this way and that in a curious manner. Sheckley instinctively brought the rifle up. The alien obviously had no idea what it was since it made no move.

Sheckley pulled the trigger.

The shut rang out through the forest and Sheckley's ears, and he watched as one of the pointed wings of the creature exploded in a shower of yellow-green blood. Except, much to Sheckley's discomfort, the bullet didn't kill the creature. Instead, it simply twitched the wing in question before dropping from the tree and coming down on him.

He didn't even have a chance to move as it landed on him, pinning him to the ground. Spiked yellow claws stabbed down on his head, and Sheckley frantically moved his head to avoid being skewered. With a sudden swing that surprised Sheckley with it's speed and ferocity, he swung the rifle across the creature's side, knocking it from him like a baseball. He lost his grip on the rifle in the swing, leaving him to merely watch as it flew over the monster's head and thudded to the ground behind it.

"Oh, _shit_!"

The exclamation did nothing to deter the alien, which came for him again. Sheckley scrambled to his feet and started running. Dodging through knee height bushes and ducking underneath branches, Sheckley barely had a chance to check behind him for his hunter, his only indication of continued pursuit the occasional buzzing and clicking noise.

The sound of running water came to his ears, and Sheckley bust through some thick bushes, only to fall immediately down into a sudden creek. He rolled against the rocks and mud, coming to a final, splashy stop, facedown, in the stream below. Groaning, he pushed himself up from the cold bath he had given himself. Another click made him look around, and he saw the creature standing next to him, blood dripping and breathing looking slightly laboured. Whether the damn things could even breathe or not, Sheckley didn't know, but still… it _looked _like it was tired.

It brought up it's claw, and Sheckley reached for the machete in his boot. He had no chance to stopping the creature from killing him, he knew that. But at least he could take the son of a bitch with him.

And then it exploded.

And green shit went _everywhere._

Sheckley simply lay in the water for a while, staring blankly ahead at the spot his killer had once occupied. The yellow-green blood was drifting away in the water beneath him. Looking down to his clothes, he found himself caked in the stuff. Then he noticed that he had the urge to cough. Letting it happen, he found with a certain amount of revulsion that he was spitting up green. Just… green.

At least it was only blood. He wasn't sure how he would handle alien organs being in his mouth at this point.

A shadow cast itself over him, and Sheckley looked around to who he presumed was his saviour. Finding a hunched over, scaly brown thing with a huge red eye, he scrambled back in the water, backing his way up to the shore of the stream with his machete out in front of him warningly.

"Back up! Back the hell up!"

It was then that Sheckley noticed that there was not only one, but four of the creatures. The one in the middle, seemingly their leader, looking to the others curiously. A low growl of a voice emerged, and, in a display that Sheckley wouldn't forget for the rest of his life, began talking to each other.

At the same damn time.

They weren't speaking English, but then, Sheckley wasn't expecting them to. They _were _aliens, after all.

Finally, the lead thing turned to look at him.

"The human… must not fear," it managed, voice guttural and strained, as though struggling with the concept of speaking.

Sheckley just stared at them for a few moments, letting the sounds of the forest surround them all.

"Uh… what?"

"Fear. It is unnecessary. These ones shall not harm you. Vortikind are the least of mankind's concerns."

The others nodded in agreement. Off to the right of the central alien, one pulled up something about the size of a football that had been, thus far, dangling limply from his spindly arm.

"And we have sustenance!"

This brought about a group enthusiasm, all of the aliens nodding excitedly and chorusing 'Sustenance'.

"The human will join us in the feast!"

Squinting, Sheckley tried to make out whatever the hell it was that the thing was carrying. On closer inspection, it looked like nothing Sheckley had ever seen, either in person or on documentaries. Another alien. Aliens hunting aliens. Made sense. Still, he decided he wasn't too hungry for _that _kind of food.

He put up a polite hand. "Uh… no thanks."

They all glanced to each other. "Is it not… satisfactory?" the leader asked, almost sounding hurt.

"Oh, no, um… I just, uh… I'm not hungry."

Like a sarcastic best friend, Sheckley's stomach took that moment to growl so loud that he was sure it echoed all the way to Fossil and back.

Once more, the aliens looked to each other before the leader spoke again, sounding slightly amused. "It is likely the human is attempting to be…" it struggled for a moment, then finally found the word it wanted. "…polite. It is unnecessary. We appreciate that the human taste buds have difficulty with the delicate flavour of headcrab."

"Headcrab?" Sheckley blinked and shook his head. "Wait, you know about politeness? And manners?"

"Indeed," the headcrab holding alien chimed in, nodding, "the Eli Vance has taught us much of these things. Certain actions are acceptable, and others are not. It is rather strange, but we have decided to adapt to the human culture. We are, after all, guests."

Struggling to take in about a hundred different concepts at once, Sheckley pulled himself to his feet and slipped the machete away. "Eli V- human… guests?"

The alien paused. "Indeed." It took a few steps towards him, and Sheckley pressed himself to the rock face behind him.

"Do you have mental deficiencies?"

"What?"

"Ah. This one apologises." The thing took a breath. "DO YOU HAVE MENTAL DEFIENCIES? THE ELI VANCE HAS TOLD US OF HUMANS THAT HAVE DIFFICULTY GRASPING SIMPLE CONCEPTS-"

Sheckley threw his hands in the air to stop the booming noise. Damn, it echoed all around the forest like a foghorn. "Stop, stop! I understand! Christ, my ears…"

"Once more, this one apologises." The alien bowed it's head graciously. "You merely seemed… unresponsive."

"Well… this is a lot to take in," he muttered defensively, rubbing his temple.

"Understandable. We had a similar experience adapting to your… unusual forms."

"Unusual?"

"Indeed. You have no third arm, and only two almost symmetrical eyes, qualities most unattractive to Vortikind. And the reproductive cycle…" it shuddered. "Most troubling."

The others nodded their emphatic agreement, muttering 'troubling' in chorus.

"Uh… yeah."

"So. Now that we have exchanged 'the pleasantries'," the alien clasped it's hands together in a disarmingly human gesture, almost pleading. "Does the human wish to join us in our feast?"

A cheer of 'feast, feast!' went up from behind him.

Sheckley's throat suddenly felt rather dry. "Um… I guess."

"Feast!" they roared, and went scampering off away from the stream, climbing up into the forest and gesturing for him to follow.

"But I reserve the right not to eat any alien… things!" he yelled after them, scrambling to keep up with their surprisingly brisk pace.

He watched and walked with the aliens (which he soon found out were called Vortigaunts) as they hunted the headcrabs and killed Antlions (the thing that had been hunting him earlier) with ease. And there were varieties of headcrabs, as well. Well, two, but still, that was two more than Sheckley knew existed this morning.

Later, with the night sky above them and a glorious full moon lighting the way, the Vortigaunts watched with fascination as Sheckley started a fire at his campsite. While one rotated seven or so headcrabs on a spit above the fire, the others became instantly enamoured with his tent. Not just the tent, but the concept of camping in general.

"Does such thin shelter provide protection from marauding consciousnesses?"

"Is the blue of any significance?"

"Does not eating in such a place introduce hygiene issues?"

That last one seemed rich coming from a scaly alien that seemed to have slick sheen to it, but Sheckley let it pass by.

And as it turned out, Sheckley took his reserved right to abstain from headcrabs. But that didn't stop him from wanting some himself.

Not only that, but thanks to his collection of supplies, he now knew that headcrab went very well with ketchup.


	4. Week Eight

Disclaimer: We don't own _Half-Life._

_**Sidelines**_

_**Week Eight by Super Chocolate Bear**_

Something nudged his leg, and Doctor Isaac Kleiner awoke with a jolt, whipping his head forward. A loud snort escaped him as he was wrenched from whatever blissful rest he had been allowed to have by fate. It had been a doctor that had awoken him, but a somewhat different kind than the ones he was used to. He doubted the man that now frantically hurled himself down the corridor had a PhD in Theoretical Physics from MIT.

Although, right now, Kleiner wished to God he had chosen to be a healer instead of a thinker. Maybe then he could have avoided the horror that he had just witnessed.

Curled up in his arms, Alyx Vance shifted in her sleep before settling down again. Kleiner resisted the temptation to run a finger across her cheek; it had taken so very long to get her to calm down, and even longer to get her to close her eyes and rest. He could see her being trouble when she was older.

And he may be the one who would have to deal with it. The possibility that Eli may not survive through the day had occurred to Kleiner more than a few times.

There had been so much blood…

"_Izzy! The wall!"_

_Kleiner wasn't used to this much running. His slight frame had never really required much maintenance, and he ate so little when he was working that it was a wonder he didn't waste away sometimes. Only Eli or Gordon with a well placed cup of coffee and a sandwich seemed to stand between him and death by malnourishment._

_The sole of his shoe flopped about incessantly as he ran, lab coat long since lost to that 'Vortigaunt'. It was fortunate that whatever was controlling them ceased to be shortly after, because Kleiner doubted they would be living to run away from this bullsquid if it had not occurred. Of course, the 'Vortigaunts' that they had met were gone now. Eli had been wary of entering a hub of human activity like Los Angeles with a team of aliens for fear of the reaction it would bring._

_Kleiner saw the regret in Eli's eyes the moment they had entered the city and come across the beast that was now mercilessly pursuing them through the aqueduct. Clouds brewed overhead as they ran, foretelling not only portal storms but the horrific incident that was to come._

_He reached the wall and looked up. It was a good few feet above him. Breathless and wheezing, Kleiner looked to Eli as he came hurtling around the tributary bend, bullsquid a sizeable distance away. Still, close enough to get the blood rushing in Kleiner's veins again._

_Looking up, he sprang as high into the air as he could, grasping desperately for the ledge. It was no use. Whatever contact his fingertips made, his thin, gentle hands were in no condition to pull his own weight up._

_And then he had something wrapped around his legs, boosting him up. Kleiner looked down as Eli pushed him, his face a quickly deepening red as he struggled with the weight. The bullsquid was horrifically close now. Kleiner pulled on the ledge as hard as he could, his hands now easily reaching over the top._

_With a final tug, he managed to pull himself over, rolling until he was lying on his back beside the ledge._

"_Izzy!"_

_Kleiner rolled over frantically, and watched as a blue, blanketed bundle was tossed in his face. He wrapped his arms around it in a panic, knowing full well what it was and how valuable it was. _

_The wailing face of little Alyx poked out, screaming at the world and the horror of it all. Kleiner couldn't agree more. Kleiner delicately put her down as far away from the ledge as he dared before returning to Eli's aide._

_He thrust out a spindly arm, aware of how weak the gesture seemed but not caring because the bullsquid was so close. "Eli! Grab on!"_

_His friend leapt up for the proffered limb, latching on easily. Kleiner pulled, and Eli scrabbled his legs against the wall, trying to get some traction._

_And then, looking into Eli's eyes, Kleiner watched his friend scream as he had never heard him scream before. That deep, gentle voice… to hear it pushed to such extremes, to hear it cracking and struggling in that way…_

_The disgusting, crunching tug of war ended with Eli toppling down on top of Kleiner. They landed beside Alyx, still crying her heart out, poor child. Kleiner felt something damp on his trouser leg. Looking down, he saw the blood that gushed from Eli's leg. Or rather, from where Eli's leg had once been._

_A shadow cast itself over them. The man knelt down, and Kleiner recognised him. Gordon?_

"_Dr Kleiner?"_

_That wasn't Gordon's voice._

"Dr Kleiner?"

He snorted himself awake again. Alarmed, he looked down to the baby sleeping in his arms. Still asleep, thank God. Tired and haggard, Kleiner brought his weary head up to look at the equally sleep-deprived doctor.

"Yes?"

"I'm Dr Marks."

"How is he?"

Marks ran a hand through his thick, long hair. To see such a young man so distressed was disturbing to Kleiner. "He's… fine. We managed to stop the bleeding, and we're going to have to cauterise the wound. But with a little luck and a _lot _of rest, he should recover."

He glanced to the double doors he had seen Eli disappear through so long ago. "May I see him?"

"Not yet. He's under a lot of sedation right now, as you can imagine."

Kleiner sighed. "No. Not really."

The young doctor nodded, understanding. "You're welcome to wait here. I'd tell you to go to a hotel, but every place I know of is bursting at the seams since that first storm."

He offered a smile which he hoped was indifferent but probably came across as sad. "I'm afraid I don't have the money, in any case. How long will it be before he can leave?"

"I'm not sure," Marks sighed, hands in lab coat pockets in a gesture so very similar to Dr Breen. It made Kleiner angry in a very irrational way. "We're getting people in every few minutes with dismembered limbs and mauled friends…" He rubbed tired eyes. "It's…"

"It's like nothing you've seen before," Kleiner offered quietly, nodding.

Slowly, the young man in front of him returned the gesture in agreement. His eyes flickered to the baby in Kleiner's arms. "Is-"

"Oh my God!"

The female cry brought both of their attention to the glass doors at the front of the ER. A high pitched whine filled the air as a familiar blue glow pulsated through the streets.

Then the wall of energy came, kicking up dust and cars as it hurtled towards them. Kleiner got on the floor and pushed himself beneath the plastic chairs. Marks was still entranced by the approaching storm as Kleiner curled up, with Alyx completely contained beneath him.

Glass shattered and people screamed as the energy burst through the glass doors. The energy fizzled and tickled as it passed through him. Alyx awoke with a cry, and Kleiner clutched her tighter.

"There, there. It will be all right. You'll see. Everything will be just fine. Ssh."

The lights flickered and went out.

The ceiling collapsed. Dust and plaster went everywhere.

And then all was dark.

* * *

(A/N: Hey, so, with BlindAcquiescence's permission I'm re-releasing this fic, and adding all the chapters we had written so very long ago. I thought it'd be a shame to leave them sitting on my hard drive, so here they are.

So yeah, on to the story. There was a serious _Cloverfield _angle to this short that was one of the reasons I really wanted to do this story in the first place. And incidentally, God bless the _Half-Life _writers for leaving events so vague. It gives us fans so much more lee-way when writing this kind of story. I've heard so many different iterations of how Eli lost his leg, but the one that cropped up the most was the bullsquid one, so I went with that.

Reviews/comments for either me or BlindAcquiescence are welcome!)


	5. Month Seven

Disclaimer: We don't own _Half-Life._

_**Sidelines**_

_**Month Seven by BlindAcquiescence**_

The building shook again, plaster and mortar falling from the ceiling like a freak snowstorm. Arne Magnusson hit the deck, and scrambled for the nearest hard surface to hide under. Civilians and soldiers alike screamed and followed his example.

_Jesus_, the former Black Mesa Employee thought, _How the hell did it all come to this?_

The sound of pounding artillery - human or theirs, he wasn't sure - echoed from the front of what used to be the local grocery store of whatever god-forsaken city they'd thought would be safe. Looking up from the green-spackled tile floor, Arne saw three humvees rocket past the front of the bombed out store, soldiers yelling at one another over radios. The armed forces were in disarray, or had been, for the last six months, since the Pentagon had been destroyed by one of the many Portal Storms that were still scouring the surface of their world.

_This was all our fault!_ Magnusson mentally screamed at himself. _We played god, and we've reaped the consequences!_ He couldn't hide behind government grants or administrative directives now, as aliens from the void poured into their world, seeking to take it for themselves. They had been so sure, so intent on the pursuit of their new science. Teleportation had been within their grasp; they had nearly conquered a world themselves, the borderworld known as Xen. But now they were getting a taste of their own medicine.

And it was a healthy dose indeed.

Blue plasma splashed into the street outside, and a woman next to him screamed as the bright light nearly blinded them all. Magnusson, in an uncommonly human gesture, pulled her against himself, shielding her from the same light that threatened to burn his own retinas.

_Valuable retinas, indeed._

But still she kept screaming.

"Blast it, woman! Calm yourself!" He yelled as the flash diminished and the fighting returned to background noise outside.

"What are we gonna do!" A man from the back called out.

"What the hell are those things?" Someone close by asked. _What a redundant question_, Magnusson thought sarcastically, _They're aliens from another world! The question is, what are _we_ to do?_

In the months since the beginning of the Portal Storms, humanity had been fighting an uphill battle. As governments around the world toppled and fell around the stress an unprecedented influx of refugees, civilization teetered on the brink of collapse. Only after a brief emergency session of what remained of the UN, which by then was made up of only the Security Council: Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States, was it finally agreed that what remained of the armed forces should be marshalled inside the largest urban centres to protect what people they could muster inside. As the months dragged on, the population resigned itself to life within the crowded cities, constantly patrolled by men with machine guns. Magnusson himself, who had lived for two hellish days inside the collapsing shell of Black Mesa before _accidentally_ teleporting his way out, would eventually make his home in Chicago, working with other physicists at the University of Chicago to find a way to stop the Portal Storms.

And that's how humanity lived. Though most might say that's how humanity _survived_.

But one hour ago, all that changed.

Magnusson, who was living in the Chicago Camp, was busy arguing with a self-important prick that was the head of the military's interim weapon R&D program over the practicality and feasibility of Directed Energy Weapons when they heard the rumblings in the distance. Scientists and civilians ran for cover, believing it to be another storm. The sirens, sounding hauntingly like air-raid alarms, never went off, though. In the first months right after the incident, alarms had been installed in all the major urban areas, which would detect the bursts of alpha radiation given off just prior to a storm materializing. At first Magnusson thought they might have been malfunctioning, but he soon realized that the pounding in the distance wasn't coming from any storm, but from the mouths of alien artillery canons.

The first plasma shell hit their camp near a tent full of civilians, sending bodies flying. The army swept through their camp seconds later, rounding up _essential personnel_ as they'd termed it. Arne was thrown into a humvee along with several other scientists and sped off.

Magnusson remembered furiously screaming at the soldiers, ordering them to tell him where they were taking him. The only response he received was, "Somewhere safe, sir."

"_Who the hell is attacking?" Someone next to him screamed. The soldier driving pointed out the window to their left. _

"_Them!" He yelled over the roar of machine gun fire. Magnusson couldn't keep his jaw from hanging open as he stared at the monstrosity lumbering down the adjacent street. The three-legged behemoth looked like a tripod from out some Wellsian War of the Worlds account. It blared a belligerent horn and a cannon that hung underneath like some Freudian phallic symbol seemed to twist space around it, concentrating matter around it into a coherent stream of blue energy, and lobbing it at a building, bringing it crashing to its foundations. The creature moved off, disinterested, as small arms fire pinged off it without any observable effect. _

_It wasn't anything like they'd uncovered in the borderworld, Arne thought, these creatures seemed like biomechanical constructs, not entirely organic as the Xenians were. He watched the creature lumber off until the battered buildings obscured his view of it. _

_Before he could turn to ask, once again, just where the hell they were headed, one of the soldiers cried out in alarm. Arne turned just in time to see a large triped, similar in construction, but not in size, to the larger ones, run towards the side of their humvee. Magnusson brought his hands up in a defensive posture, awaiting the imminent impact. The vehicle shuddered and the other occupants screamed as they were nearly overturned by the force of the creature essentially body checking the humvee. Arne was thrown against his door, his head leaving a spider's web of cracks in the glass. _

_The sounds and sights of the world around him were suddenly blurred as he scrounged for a way to open the door and escape. The muffled sound of gunfire sounded more like corn popping as the beleaguered scientist pushed the door open and fell out onto the cracked and scorched pavement. He felt the vehicle next to him lunge sideways, as if the creature had taken another shot at it. Then he felt hands on him, and someone yelling at him to get on his feet. Desert camouflage filled his vision as the soldier pulled him from the fire fight. _

Arne Magnusson blacked out for several minutes, finally waking up to the sound of sobbing civilians huddling together in the abandoned store.

After the last commotion, the street outside was relatively quiet. The sound of fighting echoed in the distance, but there seemed to be little danger just outside the storefront. Standing up and brushing himself off, Magnusson eyed a black soldier, TIBBLES embroidered on his cover-alls, who stood next to the open door, in one hand he clutched his 9mm service pistol, in the other he clasped his radio. Arne could make out a small, heated conversation between the soldier and his superiors.

Gingerly, Magnusson made his way forward, through the empty shelves and over fallen mortar, until he was standing near the soldier, looking out into the street.

"I've got over a _dozen_ people in here! I need an evac!" The soldier eyed Magnusson wearily, but quickly recognized him, clicking his radio back on. "I've got a Doc Magnusson in my charge, R&D's gonna need him!" Magnusson frowned at the thought of being the only reason the military might think of coming back this way.

The radio crackled to life, the sound of mortar shells and gunfire in the background.

"_That's a negative Eagle Six! We're backed in here; command is ordering us to pull out of the city centre! Hammer down, Hammer down!"_ The soldier's face contorted into an expression of pure anxiety and defeat.

"Bullshit, you can't leave us!" But he was cut off.

"_Tango squad just reported in, they're near your position! Hook up with them and you might have a chance!"_ There was a large explosion on the other end of the radio. _"Shi-!"_ And then the line went dead. The soldier looked down at his feet, sighing briefly before looking back up at Magnusson.

"We're overrun, these things came outta nowhere, doc."

"What did he mean by Hammer down?" Magnusson pressed. The soldier's placid expression morphed to a dismal frown.

"The 'Hammer down' protocol means they're going to sacrifice Chicago if it means getting rid of these things."

Arne frowned, still confused. "Sacrifice…?"

"What's _left_ of the air force is going to bomb us back into the stone-age if we don't get out of here quick." Tibbles risked a look outside. "They said that Tango squad's around here somewhere…" But the sound of gunfire cut him off as two soldiers basically rolled out into the street, their rifles firing on full automatic. Instinctively Tibbles was on his feet, running down the street, his pistol drawn. "Down here!" He yelled over their roaring fire fight. "Take cover!" Several more soldiers burst out into the daylight from the alley, running like men possessed.

It didn't take long to find out was they were running from. One of the smaller tripods lopped after them. 5.56mm bullets pinged off of its teal skin as it pursued its prey. Tibbles stopped short and let off several shots before realizing the futility of his actions. The group of soldiers was already running for the store, the creature hot on their trail.

One soldier slipped on a scattering of debris. The man face-planted in the pavement, while one of his comrades stopped to pick him up. The creature, moving so much like an animal Magnusson hastened to call it a hunter of sorts, slapped the would-be rescuer away as easily as if he were a rag-doll. The man went flying through a window. He didn't get back up.

Magnusson watched in morbid curiosity as the hunter bent down and turned the wounded soldier over, like a butcher inspecting meat. The man cried out for help, but after the last display of bravery, his comrades were content to make for the relative safety of the store. Twin scythes slowly protruded from underneath the creature's "head", and were quickly plunged into the man's chest. The man cried out, but his mouth quickly filled with his own blood, welling up from his punctured lungs, and he finally passed on.

The creature tapped him with a large foot and, finding that he no longer moved, turned his attention on the rest of his fleeing prey. The soldiers finally reached the store and turned to take defensive positions. Tibbles pushed Magnusson aside, yelling at him to find cover. The men began firing, though their weapons, as before, had little effect. Magnusson saw it steady itself, its "face" contorting into something that might have resembled a snarl. A high-pitched whine sounded, and suddenly the air was filled with tiny blue flechettes, speeding towards the soldiers as fast as their machine guns had been spitting.

One man caught several in the chest. He stumbled backwards, coughing up blood. Two of his fellow soldiers bent down to pick him up, intent on bringing him inside while the rest covered them.

"Jesus!" Tibbles cried. "What's next?" His voice was filled with despair. Famous last words, Magnusson pondered, as the blue flechettes, the ends of which were tipped with a blue pouch, began to glow bright and resonate. Suddenly they burst, the blue viscous fluid splattering against the two men. Screams filled the store as the soldiers cradled their faces, which burned. Arne cowered behind a table as the men cried out for help, the acid-like substance eating away at their skin.

Arne was on the verge of tears as the group of people around him fell into total panic. They crawled over one another to reach the back of the store, which had been boarded off to prevent an attack. Everyone was screaming, and Arne couldn't tune it out. He was used to being in control, being the man in charge, but who was going to take charge of this rabble of people acting like little more than animals?

"_Get down."_ Those simple words filled Magnusson with dread and elation at the same time. He looked up to see the figure of another soldier, his face obscured by a protective gas mask. Only his eyes, confident and assured, were visible through the green-tinted lenses. Magnusson hadn't seen this man with the group of soldiers before, and he wondered where this figure had come from.

The soldier held his M4A1 steady, his hands fingering the attached M203 grenade launcher.

"_Everybody get down!"_ His muffled cry once more sounded through the mask. That's when Magnusson recognized that confidence.

The name seeped its way into his mind.

_Corporal Shephard._

That soldier, the one who had rescued him from those creatures in the Hydro-Fauna labs back at Black Mesa. That soldier who, despite orders, had chosen to instead help him survive rather than kill him. The young soldier had in his possession the prototype Displacer, a portable teleportation device that could, with _varying_ degrees of accuracy, slingshot an individual around the borderworld without all the equipment used by the Lambda Complex. Magnusson, in a misguided attempt to help them both escape, accidentally sent himself through the void.

Magnusson remembered sitting alone in the desert, his white clean-room suit stained with alien blood and the red dust of the New Mexican desert, wondering if Shephard had made it out alive.

Now, looking up at the towering figure next to him, Magnusson knew this wasn't Shephard, but he knew this man had the same will, the same drive, to protect those around him. Arne saw him train the business end of his rifle on the hunter, as it charged the storefront. Tibbles turned, looking as perplexed as Magnusson had at the sight of such a confident figure, as those around him fell back on their baser instinct of survival. Magnusson saw Tibbles open his mouth to speak before the soldier in the mask cut him off.

"_Semper Fi, asshole,"_ he muttered, and his finger pulled the trigger on his grenade launcher. The ordinance made a muffled _thwump_ as it exited the barrel. Magnusson ducked, but in his mind's eye he could see the shell hit the ground in front of the hunter. He felt the vibrations, and saw more of the mortar fall as the explosion rocked the store. A queer cry rang out, and Magnusson felt another, shorter vibration, as he assumed the creature finally fell to the ground.

Elated, Magnusson raised his head over his cover, finding a thick fog of dust obscuring most of the outside. Tibbles and two other soldiers poked their heads up, and silently signalled to each other that the threat had been eliminated. Magnusson turned to thank their saviour when he heard the other men shouting at each other, the sound of giant footsteps and another belligerent horn trumpeting filling the air. Before Magnusson could react, he saw the air outside distort, and a bright blue beam struck the building. The ceiling, which had so long hung low and threatening to collapse, gave way, and the people inside, despite the masked man's best efforts, were covered in an avalanche of debris.

* * *

Magnusson coughed, long and hard. His lungs burned, and his head felt several sizes too small. Opening his eyes, he saw a blighted sky; covered in gray clouds, green lightning jumping back and forth.

"They said he's the one who fought them, all the way back to their world," a voice came from somewhere off in the distance.

"I heard he took on aliens, the military…_everything_. A freaking four-eyed nerd turned Rambo, sounds like a movie," another voice responded, a tinge of doubt lingering in his voice. His companion must have registered it.

"Just ask them! The what-ever-they're-called…"

"Vortigaunts," his friend corrected him. Magnusson rubbed his head, feeling dried blood flake off, and tried to push himself up.

"Vortigaunts, yeah. They said he's the one who freed them! They were slaves, under mind control or somethin'…whoa, looks like he finally came to." Magnusson felt an intense sense of vertigo as he tried to stand. Arms immediately helped to steady him, setting him down on a chair.

"You okay, buddy?" A young man, no more than twenty, his face pock-marked with scratches and other minor wounds, grinned broadly. "We weren't sure if you were gonna wake up from that one."

Arne, still too disoriented to speak, simply nodded feebly. How had he survived the building's collapse?

The young man looked at him nervously. "You okay?"

Coughing slightly, Arne waved a dismissive hand. "I…I'm fine. Just need to get my bearings…" Looking around, he found himself in the centre of a small camp which had been set up in a battered parking lot next to a bombed out department store. Off in the distance he could see the ruins of Chicago…

And a giant, angry red eye of a portal staring down at its centre. Magnusson gasped, his companion looking off in the same direction.

"It's been like that for the last two or three hours," the man said. "We haven't heard any more fighting; we saw the last of the military get the hell outta dodge about an hour ago."

How could an extra-dimensional portal _possibly_ sustain itself without blasting the area with a shower of alpha radiation, killing anything unlucky enough to be organic?

The man next to him quickly became disinterested and moved off to continue his conversation. "Just go ask one of the Vortigaunts, they're sayin' Freeman'll be back, and it's all gonna be over."

"Yeah, yeah." His friend laughed him off. "Sure, now come on, help me move these supplies…" The two men walked off, leaving Arne Magnusson staring intently up at that glowing red eye.

"You once resided in Black Mesa, did you not?" That queer, liquid voice, characteristic of humanity's newfound alien allies, came from behind him. Magnusson turned to face the Vortigaunt. The slumping figure gestured to a flask of water, which Magnusson sucked down with ardour. Pouring what little was left on his face, wiping dried blood and debris away, the alien looked on intently. In the seven months since their freedom from the mind shackles of their leader, the Nihilanth, the aliens, with their communal hive-mind, had developed a large, albeit slightly archaic, English repertoire.

"Why… yes, I was indeed once in the employ of that confounded installation," he muttered angrily, still staring at the portal hanging over the battered cityscape.

"We remember the Magnusson, a man of great renown within his field of expertise… Our own kind has worked for centuries to uncover the secrets that our ever expanding universe hides within its folds."

Arne looked back and he began to feel a kinship with the alien. A race of scientists, seekers of knowledge, a people he could relate to.

"What is your name?" Magnusson asked meekly.

The Vortigaunt lowered its head. "This one has yet to choose a human name for itself, as our true names are neither relevant nor possible for humanity to… vocalize."

Magnusson looked at the slightly pathetic creature, its back bent in a perpetual look of subservience. It reminded him of Uriah Heep, the humble antagonist from Charles Dickens novel _David Copperfield_, though he kept the observation to himself.

Grinning, Magnusson stood up and held his hand out. "Well, Friend, what would you say about the current state of things?" The alien stared at his hand, and Magnusson wagered that the creature had yet to experience that simple human introduction before. Tentatively, the alien grasped his hand clumsily in his own talon, leaving Arne to do the shaking. "That portal…"

"Is the gateway through which it will arrive." The Vortigaunt finished for him.

"What will arrive?"

The alien stared up at the massive portal, and Magnusson could see its outline reflected in the Vortigaunt's own large red eye. The image was unnerving.

It responded in its own language. "Shu'ulathoi…but we have no word for it in your vernacular. Only that it will spell misery of untold degrees for your peoples…"

"So, I see you're up," a voice came from behind the Vortigaunt. Magnusson found the soldier called Tibbles hobbling up to them with an improvised crutch, his leg wrapped in a blood soaked bandage. Tibbles grinned at him, and patted Magnusson on the shoulder. "The Vort's said you'd make it, but you looked pretty gone, man."

"What… what happened?" Magnusson said, momentarily forgetting his Vortigaunt ally's mysterious utterances.

Tibbles shrugged his shoulders. "The Vort's were able to mass together and take down that… that thing. Dragged whoever was even half-alive out of the rubble, and brought 'em back here."

"And what of Hammer down…" Arne began.

Tibbles bit his lip. "I don't know man. On one hand, I'm glad it didn't happen, on the other, it makes me wonder what happened to our air support…"

Magnusson turned back to the city. "It's so quiet…"

Tibbles nodded nervously, the Vortigaunt merely shifted his weight from one strangely padded foot to the other.

"What happened to that soldier…back at the store…"

Tibbles lifted his shoulders in an expression of bewilderment. "He wasn't part of my platoon, and Tango Company hadn't seen him before."

"He said something…" Arne searched his memory for a moment. "_Semper Fi._" Tibbles nodded.

"He was a Marine, alright."

"Like the ones at Black Mesa?"

Tibbles looked at him nervously, he instantly knew what Magnusson was talking about. The Silencings. "Can't say for sure. After the Portal storms started up a good portion of them just disappeared. I heard a group of rogue Force Recon soldiers are holed up somewhere in Central America."

"You mean they've left us to… to this?" Arne cried angrily, pointing at the ruined landscape around them. The silencings were one thing, but abandoning humanity in its single most important hour of need was inconceivable.

"Hey doc, I'm not the guy you should be…"

"_Look!" _The Vortigaunt cried. The two humans looked back towards Chicago and saw the air directly below the large portal shimmer green, just the way it did before the violent storms that terrorized their planet's landscape had done.

The ground shook violently; Tibbles leaned against Magnusson for support. There was a bright flash, like that of a nuclear detonation, and Magnusson momentarily feared being blinded. But slowly the light faded, and Magnusson blinked, struggling to see what had happened.

Before his vision truly returned, he heard their alien companion whisper, "This is how it has begun, across a thousand scattered worlds… always the same."

It was too big to believe, its size boggled the mind. The blue obelisk dominated the skyline, rising high above what was left of the city, reaching into the gray clouds above like some new-age tower of Babel. Magnusson sucked in a chilling breath, and he could hear Tibbles utter several curses next to him.

But it was the Vortigaunt, in his queer, liquid tongue, which narrated the scene.

"It will be this way in every settlement across this planet. They will come, they will conquer, and they will control."

Magnusson turned to it, the crease in his brow betraying his age. "But confound it, Uriah!" He heard himself use the antiquated name. "_Who are _they?"

Again the Vortigaunt muttered a name in its alien tongue. "The Universal Union."

* * *

(A/N: The meeting with Shephard Magnusson is talking about was in my fic 'The Black Mesa Incident'. I wrote Magnusson as the scientist Shephard frees from the underwater tank in 'Crush Depth' (just without the retinal scanner blowing up his face, obviously). My personal thanks to BlindAcquiescence for writing it!

Anyway, read and review, people!)


	6. Year Three

Disclaimer: We don't own _Half-Life._

_**Sidelines**_

_**Year Three by BlindAcquiescence**_

"_ETA Five minutes. Prep for HALO, ladies," _the pilot spoke over the intercom.

The cabin of the old V22 Osprey glowed with dull neon green as the soldiers readied themselves for the covert skydive. Faces, obscured by helmets fixed with visors and oxygen masks, nodded to each other. The men lined up in front of the back loading door, which slowly opened.

"What's the situation on the ground?" the leader spoke into his helmet radio as the door opened to expose the black sky and clouds beyond.

"_No scanner activity… yet. I can't guarantee they didn't pick up our heat sig, though." _

The leader's helmet tilted in a disapproving manner. "Keep me updated. Nearest activity?"

There was a pause. _"Nothing south of LA, we're clear down to Baja. Just like Command said, Charlie's left this area pretty much alone." _

A grunt came from behind the squad leader. "Yeah, Command can be _really_ reliable."

"Stow it, Marine," the leader snapped. He spoke into his microphone. "Alright Eagle One, see you in twelve hours."

"_Good hunting, Colonel," _the pilot said.

The Colonel looked up at the red light glowering down at him from the roof of the plane. For a moment the man almost hoped it wouldn't turn green, giving them the signal to make the final plunge into a possible ambush. But, right on schedule, the small light chimed and turned green.

"_You're clear for HALO," _the pilot spoke mechanically.

"I always hated this part," the Colonel's subordinate groaned behind him.

The Marines were off, each one tapping the other on the shoulder before they took the dive. The Colonel went first, sailing through the air like a bullet. Finally he reached terminal velocity, the speed at which his body's velocity ceased to increase, and simply let himself fall. Looking to his left, then to his right, he was able to see some of the other soldiers. They'd all been trained for this, sure, but this would be the first successfully executed covert jump since the Seven Hour War.

It was an odd feeling, shuddering in midair. The Colonel tried to push the thoughts of the first attempted jump out of his mind. He hadn't been there, but he'd seen the vid feed transmitted from one of the soldiers. They'd tried a rescue op into New York, with the hope of extracting the president and several other key scientists, but mid-jump the would-be rescuers were caught in the middle of one of the last recorded portal storms, and thrown horribly off-course. They'd landed in a hornets' nest, the middle of downtown New York, where they'd been torn to shreds by the Combine's Synth crabs.

Another shudder. He would never forget those screams.

He was dragged out of his reverie by the voice of his second-in-command. _"I see the LZ…"_

The Colonel strained to see through the blackness, but that was all he saw.

"I don't…" He stammered, but the Major cut him off.

"_Team, switch to IR." _

The Colonel cracked a wry grin, which sadly no one saw, since it was a rare expression for him. He tapped the side of his helmet, the small move creating a slight bit of air resistance, slowing his descent. The image on his visor suddenly shifted, and the small flares, which had been dropped off by predator drones the day before, shone like beacons in the night.

Taking back command, the Colonel spoke into his mic. "Get ready to land."

He heard each soldier acknowledge, then gripped the zip-cord, pulling it, and releasing the parachute. The sudden air resistance threw him slightly off balance for a moment, before he finally was able to right himself. He heard the other chutes deploy, and watched the ground as it came up to meet them.

He hit the dirt hard, kicking up dust. He heard, and saw, the others land close by, their chutes cascading around them like so many leaves dropping in fall. Immediately the soldiers were on their feet, weapons at the ready.

"Regroup," the leader spoke, and the men converged on his location, standing in a semi-circle around him. "Ramirez, McShane, put those IR beacons out, we don't want to signal our presence more than we have to." Two of the ubiquitously masked men nodded and took off. The Colonel slipped his M4 out of its protective sheath and slipped a silencer on the end, nodding at the others to do the same. "We're just due north of the target. I want a five meter spread, cut your radios." The masks all nodded, and the soldiers set out to the south, towards their objective.

The desert floor spread out beneath them, with little room for cover or camouflage. The wind had picked up and the cracked ground seemed to howl in protest as the twelve men quickly crossed the parched landscape.

Finally, as they neared their objective, they could see the ghostly outlines of chain-link fences. At twenty-meter intervals the men saw signs warning that they were entering government property.

'BARSTOW MARINE CORP LOGISTICS CENTER' was emblazoned across the top of each sign with the warning 'USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED' against any and all trespassers written below. The fence, though, was withered with age, and the soldiers found a hole they could slip through, one at a time. Another thirty meters and they were standing in the middle of a large parking lot, with several derelict vehicles. The scene, though, didn't look like anything out of the post-apocalyptic reality they all lived in. it looked like the Marines stationed here simply left. Turned the lights off and got the hell out. The transports and humvees all seemed in pristine condition save the wear and tear of the desert landscape.

"Jesus," the Colonel heard someone said under their breath, "it's like they all just up and disappeared into _thin air_."

He nodded in agreement. If this was a military base, the defence distribution and air supply depot they'd been briefed on, it should have seen _some_ action. Where were the barricades, or the artillery craters? Where the hell were the _bodies_?

The Colonel tapped his radio, breaking the silence. "The objective's inside," he said, pointing to the large building, flanked on either side by huge, half-moon, aircraft hangers. The soldiers made their way to the front door, a huge mess of reinforced steel and concrete. The Colonel pointed to the eye-scanner next the small guard station that sat beside it. "Ramirez, do your thing." The soldier pulled a small pouch from his black suit and unscrewed the panel next to it, uncovered several plug-in ports. Taking a USB cord from his pouch, he plugged it in and tapped on a small keyboard sewn into the pouch. The eye-scanner lit up, flickering, then dying out again, before finally chirping its approval as the screen glowed a bright green.

The soldier turned to his Colonel. "All right, I plugged your retinal scan in, you're good to go, Colonel Jackson."

Jackson slipped his helmet off and handed it to the soldier next to him. His scruffy gray beard poked out of the black turtleneck as he sidled up next to the scanner and leaned in. The machine took its reading and hummed accordingly. The door shuddered, hesitated, and slowly slid open, all-together louder than he would have hoped, but at least it opened.

The men slipped inside, their weapons at the ready. When nothing jumped out at them, Jackson gave Ramirez the order to close the door behind them.

"All right people, it looks like we're the only one's here."

The men each slipped off their helmets, exposing their own dusty and weathered faces. The man next to Jackson, whose face was nearly as black as the covert material he wore, grinned back at him.

"Looks like someone left the phone off the hook," he said, gesturing to the lit corridors.

Jackson grunted. "Emergency lighting, Tower, went on when the generators cut out." He turned to the rest of the squad. "All right people, you know the score. We're here to see if _our benefactors_ have been through here, and if not, see if there's anything here we can use. I don't have to tell you that any fuel or aircraft maintenance supplies are first priority, weapons and medicine second, food last."

"Hey Colonel, we gotta eat don't we?" one of the men chirped. Jackson shot him a look.

"You eat when your ass is walkin' out of the debriefing room, in one piece, or _not_." There was a slight chuckle all around before the men finally got back down to business. "We split into two teams, Ramirez, Swan, Edgecomb, Brandish, and Franks, you're with me. Tower, you take the rest. I want you to recon the east side of the base, that's the east hanger and the infirmary. We'll take the west hangar, armoury, and barracks. Oorah?" The men responded in kind, and split up. "I want constant radio contact at ten minute intervals."

The men split up, each searching their respective part of the installation. Everywhere it was the same, no sign of any kind of combat. Jackson's team found the armoury completely stocked.

"Jesus, what did they think? That nothing was gonna happen? All this stuff is just sitting here," one of the Marines muttered, sifting through the inventory report.

Edgecomb looked up at his commanding officer. "We got enough to outfit a whole company."

Jackson nodded; glancing over a shelf stocked with several AT4 shoulder mounted rocket launchers. He grinned, something they could _really_ use.

"_This is Tower, we're in the hangar, and boy did we hit the jackpot. Enough fuel to last till judgement day."_

Jackson frowned. "That's already come an' gone, my friend."

"_I hear that. What about on your end?"_

"All's quiet on the western front. The armoury's fully loaded, it's almost too good to be true."

There was a long pause before Tower finally spoke, albeit quieter. _"It usually is, talk to you in ten."_

"Affirmative." And with that, the men returned to their careful search.

Not five minutes later, Jackson's radio chirped. That was odd, he thought, Tower's early, and that _never_ happens.

"What is it?"

"_We got problems."_

Jackson's blood ran cold. "What kind of problems?"

"Twenty foot high problems," Tower said once the other team finally joined him in the large lobby connecting the hangar to the infirmary. "I thought it was odd that while the hangar and the armoury were completely intact, the infirmary was totally ransacked. Well, I _thought_ it was odd, until we found _this_."

The men stared up in stunned silence in front of the large metallic blue door, the material ubiquitous of their Combine overlords. And emblazoned across the front was that damned circle, that jagged spiralling image that they'd only seen in the visions caught by Vortigaunts who were captured, and taken inside Citadels for questioning… or worse.

Jackson's throat was dry, and it made a cracking sound as he finally found the courage to speak. "Christ, Tower… why the hell do you think they put it _here_?"

The black Marine shrugged his shoulders. "I'm more concerned with what's behind it."

Jackson nodded and looked at his watch. "We got six more hours till evac." He looked hesitantly up at the looming doorway. "Just what the hell are you bastards _hiding_ down here?" he whispered to himself. Walking up to the doorway, he let his gloved hand slide down it. Dust streaked and his hand instantly felt cool, a peculiar feature of this type of alloy.

"The door looks like it hasn't been opened in over a year," Ramirez shrugged.

Jackson stepped away, though never taking his eyes off that symbol; it had a hypnotizing effect on him.

"Can _you_ open it?" He asked the Tech officer. Ramirez walked up to the glowing red light to the side of the door and pulled his pouch out. This time he took several wire cutters out and snapped a few tendrils of wiring free from the locking mechanism, connecting several of his own. A moment later the small red light blinked green.

"Ready?" he asked Jackson, who nodded to the others, who took up firing positions outside the door. With a shriek the door almost cascaded away as it broke up into smaller sections, which either slid into the floor, or were drawn up above it.

_Always with the theatrics_, Jackson thought.

Beyond the gaping threshold, the corridor was as alien as the doorway that concealed it. A slanting ceiling with several odd blue lights hanging from it, crawled downward at an angle, deep into the ground beneath the base. When a platoon of Overwatch didn't crawl out of the darkness, Tower nudged Jackson, who in turn ordered the squad to move out, down the hallway. Tower and Jackson brought up the rear.

"You never _were_ very good at this whole command thing, were you?" Jackson grunted.

Tower didn't respond right away. "Yeah, well you play the cards you were dealt, eh?" The hallway curved, and Jackson got the feeling they were following something akin to a spiralling staircase.

"You think you're going to find something about him down here, don't you?" Jackson asked.

Tower nodded, watching the men in front of them cautiously moving towards a visible light in the distance.

"You don't believe he died back in that shithole, do you?" Jackson said, his voice patronizing.

"Do you?" Tower threw the question right back at him. Jackson was silent. "You heard what the Vort's said, he's coming back."

Jackson had a hard time believing what the Vortigaunts had told them, even Sherlock, Jackson's close Vortigaunt ally. A single grunt, a lone jarhead, spearheading an alien attack, and making it out alive? Not likely.

Deciding to change the subject, Jackson observed that the corridor was slowly opening into a larger chamber. "Tower, take point, two meter spread."

Tower nodded and jogged up to the front, leading the rest of the soldiers.

The glaring fluorescent lighting of the chamber left spots in his eyes, but as they adjusted, it was easy to make out that this was unlike any Combine installation he'd seen. Equipment tables and alien technology lay scattered all over the floor. Printed readouts, largely uncommon in any Combine technical station they'd raided in recent memories, padded they feet as they spread throughout the large room.

"They sure up and left in a big hurry," Tower mumbled, shuffling some of the papers around with his boot.

Jackson bent down and scooped up several documents. "'Host subject FXY12 confirms earlier suspicions that non-native DNA cannot co-exist without prior genetic predisposition…'" He sifted through the pages, picking another one out. "'To replace expended test subjects, more natives will be transported from internment camps to the north, as per request of the administrator.'" Jackson looked up at Tower, understanding in his eyes.

"That son of a bitch, he was using this place for a testing ground." Tower cursed. The rest of the men looked on uneasily.

"What the hell is project 'Victor'?" one of the grunts said, as he handed a bunch of pages to Tower.

"Not any project I've ever heard of before the war…"

"That table," Jackson pointed. "Prop it up. McShane, three of you start collecting all this stuff. The rest of us are going to recon." The Marine nodded and tapped two others, who began collecting the scattered intelligence.

"What the hell were they doing to people down here?" Tower grunted angrily to Jackson as he walked through the chamber and into the next room guarded by an unlocked door. He waved a hand over the green, motion sensitive eye and the blue door slid sideways. Tower heard an intake of breath, and he pushed his way into the next room.

"_This."_

The room was filled with orange glowing cylinders, bubbles slowly oozing their way up in the viscous fluid. There must have been over twenty in that room alone, and Jackson could see another door beyond. But it wasn't the cylinders themselves that were so horrifying, but what they contained.

Men and woman, or what used to be them, hung lazily in the embryonic fluid. Their flesh was desiccated, pulled tight over their forms. They had been left like this for some time. As they passed the rows of display tubes, they saw how their human forms had been overrun by hard, alien plating, how limbs and appendages had been added or subtracted, seemingly at random, in an attempt to create something more horrifying than the one that preceded it.

Though the amount of limbs and eyes may have differed for each individual, the rough skin and practically bullet resistant armour plating could be seen to have clawed its way across each person's body. Jackson saw faces frozen in terror, some weeping, and others seemingly frozen in a murderous glee. In some places, the organic armour didn't quite cover every inch, and surgically implanted limbs or muscle enhancements could be seen.

"_Ubersoldaten_," Tower muttered.

Jackson could turn away from the faces in the tubes, but was able to mutter, "What?"

"Hitler tried to experiment with political prisoners during the war to create a soldier that couldn't be stopped. He did it to women, even children. But this… this is so much more terrible…" His hands clenched. "Breen… you bastard."

"You saying these… people are some kind of weapon?"

"Maybe they were the first attempt at the Transhuman arm of Overwatch?" Jackson heard Ramirez offer as he walked by the cylinders coolly, as if it didn't bother him. "Maybe this project 'Victor' experimented with them here, before they put it into standard practice at the Citadels and Camps."

"But why did they leave so suddenly?" Tower wondered.

Jackson led them through to the next room, which resembled more of an observation concourse at an insane asylum than anything else. Rows up rows of glasses observation ports lined the hallway.

"Jesus, look at that," Ramirez said in disbelief. He walked up to the nearest window, and found it nearly cracked in half. "This stuff is bullet proof, bomb proof, hell I bet it's even _Shephard proof_, and something on the other side of this thing nearly busted it wide open."

The glass was tinted black, and could only be turned otherwise by use of one of the control terminals. Jackson looked around and saw one on the opposite wall. There was still power, so all he needed to do was find the right control. He found it surprisingly easy to navigate, and he realized this place must have been staffed by a rotation of…

_Forced labour_. His mind called out. Jackson couldn't bear to think of people experimenting and helping others experiment on innocent people. He found the control panel and ordered the station to turn off the window tint.

"Christ!" He heard both men shout behind him. Jackson turned and saw that behind the window was a creature that resembled a man only in that it had two legs and two arms. It head seemed to have shrunk down into its muscular shoulders. The behemoth lay against the wall opposite the window, a large, dried blood gash where its forehead should have been.

"That thing _head butt _the glass!" Ramirez moaned. "It's got to be stronger than anything the Combine use for CQC."

Tower nodded, staring intently at the monstrosity. Overwatch was strong, stronger than most of the men in their squad. Close quarter combat was usually out of the question.

The men walked along the corridor, following the windows and Jackson felt as though they were following the progression of the project that had once gone on here. The further they followed, the more the creatures stopped resembling monsters and began looking more like their former selves again, albeit slightly more enhanced. Synthetic muscles, metal grafted to exposed bone, all of it sought to build a better warrior.

They watched in numbed silence until they came to some of the last observation ports. What looked like finished products of the experimentation were laid on surgical tables, and each one seemed to be in the middle of having white armour grafted onto their reinforced skin. Jackson shuddered at the sight of the glittering armour; Breen and his quest to build a super soldier had perverted the innocence inherent in the choice of colour.

The corridor ended at what looked like an office room. The door had been left ajar, and inside they found only a desk and a computer console on the opposite side of the room, sporting a large monitor. Jackson set his rifle down on the desk and immediately began rummaging through it, but found that it had already been hastily cleared out.

"What about the computer?" he heard Tower mutter.

"I doubt it's got anything useful on it," Ramirez grunted. "Assholes probably wiped the memory core before they split."

The terminal powered on as Jackson flipped a series of switches on the side. The last three years that they had spent spying on the Combine had afforded him knowledge of their computing technology. Ramirez was right, though, as at first glance it seemed that the data stores had all been erased. Jackson searched through history files and message dumps until he came across several damaged, although still operable files.

"I might have something." His voice seemed to quaver. "Bringing it up now."

The blue screen fizzled, a blue static covering the monitor.

"Damnit," Jackson growled, "looks like this is only going to be audio."

"When was the message sent?" Tower asked.

Jackson checked the timestamp at the bottom of the screen. "Not too long after the War… nine months, a year, I think…"

"…_though I've not had time to adequately go over security footage myself, the after-action report suggests that your ability to control your test subjects has deteriorated beyond acceptable limits."_

"That's Breen!" Tower cracked angrily.

"_I applaud your recent progress in attaining a viable subject host, but the rate at which the _flawed_ subjects are damaging sensitive material, I have, in concurrence with our benefactors, decided that testing and all inquiry related to project codenamed 'Victor' should cease, and all test subjects should be terminated, effective immediately. You are to gather all sensitive information and evacuate the installation."_

The blue static promptly cut out, ending the transmission.

Ramirez stood, transfixed on the black monitor. "So the test subjects were beginning to get out of hand, they didn't respond to orders. It seems like Breen didn't think the project was worth it. But what's this about a viable host subject?"

Suddenly Jackson's radio chirped. _"Sir, this is McShane. I've got something I think you should see."_

Jackson rolled his eyes. "Jesus, what next?"

Back at the office, McShane laid several pieces of paper on the desk in front of Jackson. "This seems to match up with what Breen was saying. They couldn't control their test subjects. The alien DNA they were trying to graft onto the human genome didn't just affect the physical appearance, it altered their mind. 'Enhanced Aggression' and 'Uncontrollable Violence' are thrown around a lot in the reports." He raised a finger. "Except, in one case." He flipped to a section of papers. "Subject KF7-Delta, who they refer to as subject 'K', responded to the treatment with minimal cellular degeneration, and without the enhanced aggression side effects." He set the paper down. "This guy's cellular makeup seemed to match up perfectly with what they were trying to accomplish. He would have been stronger, faster, and smarter than anything we've seen the Combine pump out of their camps and factories."

Jackson sat back in the large chair. "Christ…"

A frown crossed McShane's face. "That's not all."

Jackson rubbed his face wearily. "_Of course _it's not," he muttered under his hands.

"This guy, Subject K, he was at Black Mesa." There was an awed silence. McShane picked up the stack of papers and read off several lines. "Subject K has shown little recollection of his life previous to selection for project Victor. What little information that has been collected indicates that said subject was involved in the Black Mesa Incident. His body type and physical skills are indicative of either military or private security training."

Immediately Tower snatched the papers from him. "Give me those," he growled. He scanned the page, and looked up at Jackson. "You don't think…" His eyes grew wide with terror.

"Tower…" Jackson began.

His voice became frantic. "He's the only one who coulda survived that thing. You know it."

"Tower, you can't possibly believe…"

"You heard what the Vorts said, he made it out alive."

"Plenty of us did, it could be _anyone_."

Their voices were raised and Ramirez and McShane looked awkwardly on. They know these two men had been friends of the Great Shephard, someone they had only heard stories from the Black Mesa veterans about.

"You don't know that!" Tower yelled.

Jackson stood silent. He turned to the other two men. "I need you two to step outside. _Now_."

The soldiers promptly left the room. Jackson walked around Tower and locked the door behind them.

"What the _hell_ is the matter with you?" He breathed evenly, deeply. "You're becoming obsessed, you're forgetting your duty."

"Duty? Don't you dare explain 'duty' to me. We _left_ him back there." Tower's eyes were wide, and Jackson could see a hint of moisture cloud them.

Reality dawned on Jackson. "You blame yourself, don't you?" His voice was soft now. "You think if you'd stayed behind he'd be with us right now."

Tower turned away, towards the blank monitor. "We had him on the radio, I _heard_ his voice, we could have done something…"

"We had a responsibility to get out of there and warn the rest of the world. Adrian understood that."

Tower sighed, his shoulders falling. "It doesn't make it right."

"It also doesn't mean he turned into one of Breen's sick experiments."

Tower didn't reply, he simply shrugged his shoulders.

"We don't have a whole lot of time left here. Evac's in ninety minutes. Let's copy what we can from the memory core and get out of here, this place is giving me the creeps." Jackson's fingers again ran across the terminal's keyboard.

Tower heard his superior grunt in surprise. "What?"

"Looks like we might get a look at ol' Breeny after all."

He punched a key and the monitor fizzled once more. This time there was no blue static, and _administrator_ Breen's face was all that filled the screen. He looked haggard, a pair of old glasses perched uncomfortably on his nose. He sighed and took them off, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"_I received your last communication, and frankly, Aldrich, I don't know if I agree."_ He sighed once more. _"But, our regional advisor has told me that our benefactors are in agreement that this 'Subject K' is extremely promising, and have suggested I move project 'Victor' to a more secure location."_

His tone changed, and an air of truthfulness shone through his constant stream of bullshit. _"I hope you're right. The council of advisors is on your side… this time, Aldrich. You have your pet project. I have, though, gone over K's subject profile, and I must say I find it interesting that he should have survived that traumatizing incident, though it doesn't seem as though he came out of it all in one piece. During his psyche-evaluation almost every answer he gave the proctor had something to do with… Gordon Freeman."_

There was a long pause as Breen leaned closer to the screen. _"Since you've been given authorization for this… I want you to do something for me. This… innate hatred that K seems to have for Freeman. I want you to exploit it."_

Another long pause as Breen assumed his dictatorial stance, running a hand through his thinning white hair, his tone more professional. _"Codename 'Victor', along with Subject K, currently has Overwatch's Transhuman sector's top priority for research. We'll be moving it to a secure location inside my base of operations in City 17. I trust you'll have no objections. Simply remember that all of your efforts are furthering mankind's prosperity."_ As Breen uttered the last line, the file began to skip, replaying 'Mankind's Prosperity' over and over again. Jackson found it a fitting tribute to this den of ghouls.

"Aldrich… That name sounds familiar," Jackson muttered, making a mental note to check their files back at the base.

"They moved the project to City 17. Jesus, isn't that in Eastern Europe?"

Jackson nodded.

"Well what do we do now?"

Jackson slipped a disk into his vest pocket, containing what little files they could glean from the terminal.

"This information is over two years old. Who knows what kind of progress they've made. We need to get this back to command, see what the eggheads make of it." Tower's superior picked up his rifle and slung it over his shoulder. "But until then, we do what we've been doing. Survive." He slapped Tower's back. "Besides, doesn't someone owe me a shot?"

Tower grinned. "Yeah, if you call that sludge Wilkes distils out of his toilet water whiskey."

The two men left the office, passing the rows of observation ports, and the horrifying reminders of what exactly was at stake.

* * *

(A/N: Thanks for all the reviews so far! Keep it up!)


	7. Year Five

Disclaimer: We don't own _Half-Life._

_**Sidelines**_

_**Year Five by Super Chocolate Bear**_

Eli Vance tried to ignore the way his heart skipped a beat when Dog threw Alyx into the air. Kleiner's distressed 'oh my!' didn't particularly help. But the delighted squeals from Alyx put his mind to rest, at least a little.

"I must say, Eli, Dog is an impressive piece of workmanship."

He just smiled and nodded. The reason for the mechanical pet was mainly to keep Alyx save; God knew that Eli was useless to her in a protection capacity, and Kleiner, well, Eli loved him like a brother, but there wouldn't be much he could do if Combine soldiers came bursting into the base.

Combine soldiers. The very idea made him shudder. He had heard that people were going in willingly now. They were _willing _to get flesh and bone replaced by… synthetics.

Eli could only glance down at his missing leg with distaste. Truth was, he needed something to keep his mind off the pain. The kind of painkillers he would usually be prescribed were in pretty short supply nowadays. He and Kleiner had heard stories of people intentionally overdosing on the stuff to avoid being 'drafted'.

Speaking personally, he hadn't seen a Vicodin or Percocet pill for two years. Since then he just had the whims of God deciding exactly how much pain his leg would cause him each given day. Hopefully, now they had settled on a base that was sufficiently out of the Combine's way, someone with the sufficient know-how would be able to whip something up.

He shook his head at the thought. People were dying and being forcibly changed into inhuman… things, and all he could think about this new haven they had built was the fact that they could cook up some painkillers for him. His gaze travelled from where Dog now chased Alyx around the clearing in front of them to Kleiner, who looked decidedly uncomfortable on the rock he was now perched.

"So. When are you planning on leaving?"

The fragile scientist, whose hair had been whitening considerably in recent years, sighed. "I'm not too sure. First of all, our scouts have to be sure the place they have…" he cleared his throat, "…appropriated… is safe. I don't want to have my equipment painstakingly shipped over there only for Combine thugs to roll in whack it with their batons and so on."

"And, of course, you don't want them taking you away, either."

"Hm? Oh, I suppose not."

Eli grinned, though he wasn't sure Izzy noticed it. They watched Alyx and Dog, new best friends, playing in front of them in amiable silence for a few minutes. The pain in his leg was fading a little, but he tried not to concentrate on it. The moment he started thinking about it, it would flare up and cause him discomfort for the rest of the day.

"I heard another story yesterday," Izzy announced suddenly.

"Oh, really? Who from?"

"Someone transferring over from the… base near City 13."

City 13. What used to be San Francisco. Now it was something… very different. Even more so now that the rebel contingent there had been discovered and forced out. It was only due to a complex series of tunnels beneath the city that the majority of them managed to escape. That was about a month ago. It had taken them that long to trek across the wilderness and sneak onboard one of the few human boats that the Combine allowed them to use. Eli had seen pictures of the insides of those ships. It was like they were transporting cattle.

By the time the City 13 rebels had arrived at their doorstep, only half of them remained, some caught by Antlions and headcrabs, others claiming that they knew a shortcut. Some just disappeared after the boat ride, presumably shipped off to some Combine labour camp. Or something worse, like Nova Prospekt. Eli had only heard stories about the place from Vortigaunts. They used phrases like 'castrate' and 'inside out' far too often for Eli to even consider thinking about the place except when he really had to.

"Is it a good one?"

"I think so."

"Well, go ahead. I don't think Alyx is going to want to come in any time soon."

Said seven year old was riding Dog like a horse at the moment. Since the robot pet didn't seem to mind, Eli was content to let them get on with it.

"Well, the story goes like this. Gordon Freeman, the One Free Man-"

"Wait," Eli laughed, "the what?"

"The One Free Man."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It's just a title like any other, I suppose. It was quite witty, I thought. Although I've heard others calling him The Opener of the Way."

"What?"

"Yes… I didn't think too much of that one. Supposedly it's because he's supposed to open a gateway that we will force the Combine through."

Eli wondered how far from the truth that would turn out to be. At first, Eli hadn't heard much about Gordon's exploits. As they were escaping Black Mesa, it was all they could do just to get a working teleporter rigged up; they didn't really have time to start listening to military radio chatter and see what their colleague was up to. It was only once they had emerged from the facility and been greeted by some surprisingly friendly Vortigaunts that they were given the slightest inkling that Gordon Freeman had performed miracles, and then vanished.

Both Eli and Kleiner had assumed him dead when he hadn't returned for them after a few hours. And when the announcement system had declared it was now under military command, well, that tore it. They were getting the hell out of there.

It had taken Eli some time to actually accept that Gordon Freeman, the quiet scientist who barely spoke three words to him when they first met, had done such deeds. Although he wasn't sure which were actually true, and which were exaggerated over time. The only thing he knew for certain was that Gordon had killed the Nihilanth creature that had been holding the portal open; that much the Vortigaunts confirmed. Everything else, like diving into a tank full of Ichthyosaurs to rescue a falling baby or killing ten soldiers with a crowbar and some string… he wasn't so sure of.

"So how does the story go?"

"Well," Izzy said, smiling, "Gordon comes across a Gargantua in a rail system in Black Mesa, as well as some soldiers that are doing their best to hold back the beast. As soon as he makes himself known, the soldiers, naturally, flee for their lives."

"Naturally."

"The Gargantua, however, having no such predilections about the One Free Man, decides to try his best to annihilate the small orange creature in front of it. But, just before it manages to roast him alive, Gordon jams his crowbar into one of the creature's firing apparatus, and climbs up on top of the beast."

"I'm with you so far."

"Ah, but this is where it gets interesting, Eli. Using rudimentary horse-taming skills he used while on vacation with his family in Texas - where, of course, he worked on a ranch-"

"Of course."

"-Gordon uses some rope to tame the creature, and promptly uses it to ride triumphantly through Black Mesa and destroy the Nihilanth."

Eli kept his eyes on Alyx and Dog, the former seemingly deciding to take a rest and start picking daises. Dog just watched with amazed curiosity.

"I think that's my favourite now," he said, nodding thoughtfully.

"I suppose. I rather enjoyed the story of Gordon and the five tanks. Imagine, using an experimental magnetic weapon to turn their weapons on each other at the _exact _moment they are about to fire, and doing it _just _as Xen ship drops a platoon of Xenian foot soldiers on top of him, incinerating them instantly. Amazing."

The two shared a smile, and Eli laughed. He didn't hear Izzy laugh too much, even before the Black Mesa Incident. The only instance that came to mind was when Gordon and Barney literally fell over each other on their way to the canteen. How they had managed it, Eli had never known, but somehow, Gordon had managed to pull off a sharp right turn in front of Barney that promptly sent them both tumbling head over heels down the corridor.

The thought about such times made Eli's heart ache, and quickly sent a sharp stab of pain into his leg. He couldn't withhold the hiss that emerged through his teeth, and he tried not to clutch at the offending limb.

"Are you all right, Eli?"

That managed to grab Alyx's attention, who quickly ran over with Dog following along behind. The metallic pet wasn't really any bigger than Alyx at this point, but the girl had a keen mind. She would be free to add whatever modifications she thought were necessary to keep her safe.

"Dad?"

He smiled. "I'm fine, honey. Just your dad being overdramatic. As always."

"Are you sure you don't want something, Eli?"

"It's fine," he said, trying to lean back and be casual even though his leg was screaming at him. "I'm fine. Really."

Unconvinced, Alyx and Izzy traded glances in what Eli was sure would become an increasing occurrence as his daughter got older and became less willing to indulge his crap. A cold shiver ran down his spine as he thought about Alyx getting older.

Because he wasn't sure if she would. He kept on trying to forget, to push the way in which Alyx survived Black Mesa and her mother didn't out of his mind. But it never helped. It always came back, haunting him. He supposed that he should be more worried about her being shot in a battle or being stripped of her humanity and being forced into service of the Combine or any number of other hazards that now existed in his world.

"Come on," he grunted, getting to his feet and waving off Izzy's attempts to help. "Let's get inside."

Without waiting for their agreement, he slowly started limping for the entrance to the base.

But rather than worry about anything this world could dish out, his concerns were of a different nature, every single time. Because he had been done a favour five years ago.

And he was always worried about when the time to collect would come around. 'Unforeseen Consequences' indeed.

* * *

(A/N: The fact that Gordon was a living legend by the time _Half-Life 2_ rolled around always intrigued me, and I thought there was tremendous potential for humour there. There were so many Freeman stories I didn't use, but a lot of them ended up in 'Welcome to City 17'.

Anyway, as always, keep up the reviews everyone!)


	8. Year Ten

Disclaimer: We don't own _Half-Life._

_**Sidelines**_

_**Year Ten by BlindAcquiescence**_

She had seen it with her own eyes. The fall of humanity, the fall of civilization. She watched the cities burn, and she saw the looks on the faces of hundreds as they ran in terror from the nightmares that they'd wrought. It had been too much to bear, the weight of so many deaths on her shoulders. Colette Green was a broken woman. But she grieved not for the many billions that had perished, those ten long years ago. She grieved most for her colleagues. She grieved most for her friends.

In that dingy cave, which had been her home for the last decade, Colette Green etched on the wall with the small nub of chalk she had salvaged from an abandoned school.

Well, it wasn't truly abandoned, she told herself.

The small nub of chalk slipped out of her hands as she shivered, remembering the scene. Emaciated zombies, none taller than her waist, had crowded her, and she fended them off as best she could. One HEV gloved-covered hand rubbed the oozing wound in her abdomen. She winced at the pain, noting that the infection was getting worse.

Colette brushed the waist-length, dingy unwashed hair from her eyes and continued her calculations.

"If the Xen array could generate the necessary gamma-ray frequencies, the harmonic reflux could cancel out the alpha radiation associated with prolonged portal stabilization," she murmured to herself as the chalk traced an elegant tapestry of mathematical equations across the caves' wall. The small den was covered in the white scribbling, as if a mad composer had seen fit to write his twisted symphony across the earthen walls.

"You'll never get the kind of high-wavelength frequency you need from a contained, self-inducing reflux terminal," a voice came from behind her.

Colette sneered and didn't bother to turn around. "I guess string theory wasn't high on the list of Carnegie Melon Institute Physics degrees." Her biting remark caused a silence to descend on the cave.

Below, Colette could hear the slow, methodical boring of holes into the Earth. Those creatures, those insectoid abominations from beyond were burrowing into the planet's crust, eking out a home in this transformed landscape. Colette couldn't blame them, though, as she too had retreated underground to escape what was above.

The voice of her old mentor, Dr Richard Keller, sounded from behind her. "I think you forgot to add Plancks constant there…"

Growing irritated, Colette bit back, "Not when dealing with the negative ratio!" Their constant corrections and interjections were putting her over the edge.

"He's right, you know,"she heard Gina add, coolly. "Godel proved that even when working with negative ratios, Plancks constant still applies…"

"Shut up!" Colette turned to face her criticizers. "I don't see _you_ adding anything useful to the conversation! You never _do._" But no one was there to absorb her insults, yet still she hurled them into the darkness, lit dimly by several stolen camping lanterns. "You're meddling is driving me to my wits end! I'm doing…" She began sobbing. "I'm doing all I can to right… to right the wrong that we've committed!" She stared into the darkness, seeing things that only she could see, and staring them into silence. The shadows of the woman she once called her best friend, and the man she once called a father figure receded into the dark, their voices silent.

Content, Dr Colette Green returned to her work.

But still the memories haunted her. As she lay on her bed of desiccated leaves, Colette couldn't keep the nightmares away.

"_This is it. This is our last ticket out of here."_ She could see Gina staring into the portal that sat idly before them. It's bright yellow shell coalescing into a green inner barrier, and finally into a red, angry centre.

_Colette stared into it. _

"_I must stay behind until you two are through, I'm the only one who knows how to operate the machinery." Dr Keller observed passively, as his hands flew across the console next to the teleportation device. _

_Colette looked to Gina, a meek smile on her face. "Well, we've done all we can, right? Time to go home." _

_Gina didn't return the smile, but nodded in agreement. "Time to let Freeman do the rest." she said impassively. Since the conversation Keller had with several of the surviving Lambda members about Freeman's exploits, Colette had seen a marked change in Gina's attitude towards leaving, almost as if she were reticent to get out of this god-forsaken mess. _

"_Quite so." She heard Keller almost whisper. "It's time, ladies. Colette, would you be so kind?" _

"_Where will we end up?" _

_She saw Keller's brow furrow as he stared at the console. "Almost every Xen relay source has been neutralized, save one. I don't know who re-established contact with it, but one of our older sites, an expeditionary force, has come back online. If I can pin down the source codes, I can piggyback the signal and send us… well, send us where ever they intended to go themselves." He looked up, obviously nervous. "It's our only choice, we just need to hope that where ever it leads, it's safe."_

"_Yeah, and the hell away from here." Gina grumbled. _

_Colette touched her friend's hand. "See you on the other side?" _

_Gina smiled unconvincingly. They had been through so much terror together, Colette wanted to think there was some hope for them._

"_Don't give me any of that sappy shit, just go. Cocktails are on me when all this is over." _

That was the last thing Gina ever said to Colette. The portal deposited her in the desert outside Black Mesa. She sat there, staring at the spot in which she had just landed, for what seemed like forever, waiting for further transmissions. But none ever occurred. Gina and Doctor Keller were lost.

Colette awoke sobbing, as she did almost every morning. Stumbling to her feet, she winced at the increased pain in her abdomen. Hobbling out of her cave, she found herself in the forest she called home. The green trees clashed with the almost constantly gray sky above. Colette fumbled her way down to the small nearby creek, and fell to her knees in front of it. Scooping some slightly sour tasting water into her parched mouth, she sighed in pain. The ripples in the water slowly diminished, and Colette had a brief glimpse of the person she had become.

Her once ginger hair had turned gray with the constant stress and fatigue, glowing wildly out, past her waist. Her face saw pockmarks of injuries that hadn't healed once the suit of armour she wore ran out of power. Her eyes, though, hadn't changed. They still shone bright, lively green against the demolished look of the rest of her face. The lambda symbol, scuffed and barely visible, embossed upon her breastplate caught her eye.

The Greek letter stung her eyes like an abomination. She sneered at herself, anguish and self-pity filling her soul. It was no longer a mathematical symbol to her, she thought, it was a representation of the greatest mistake in the history of man.

Gina's smug little smile leered at her over her shoulder. "And you were a part of it. Indeed, you helped to orchestrate it."

Colette grunted and threw a hand through the water, breaking the reflection. When the water finally settled, she was alone.

The infection in Colette's abdomen was getting worse, and she knew it. She tried to reason it away, tried to pretend it didn't exist, but what could she do? She wasn't a _medical_ doctor, she knew little about the inner workings of the human anatomy. Her head was filled with mathematical constants and the inner-workings of the physical universe, not the knowledge of how to quell a highly infected stomach laceration.

Colette's Hazardous Environment Suit, had it the power, would have immediately supplied her with the required antibiotics and morphine- something she desperately wished for all too often- to squelch any infection. But since her flight into the forest, it had been almost a decade since Colette had seen anything _remotely_ resembling a charger station.

In those first few months, those lonely days, that incessant robotic female voice had been Colette's sole companion. She had grown to enjoy its simple updates; its redundant system diagnostics. After enough time alone she even began to feel a strong attraction to the voice, the calm, reassuring entity that it belonged to.

Then one morning Colette awoke. It was like any other morning she had experienced, yet she immediately knew something was missing. She rummaged through her squalid living space, tearing apart her cave like a woman possessed. She stood in the middle of the ruined hideout, and finally realized what was wrong. The Heads Up Display, which had comforted her with its ubiquitous presence, was gone. She thought she could see its faint outlines in the corner of her vision, but she could never quite make it out. Colette called up a diagnostics report frantically, desperate to see if the suit still had enough power to supply her with a most basic human need, interaction.

But only silence followed her request.

Colette remembered screaming, crying out in anguish, as her last and only friend drifted off into oblivion. She took off through the forest, looking for a rock to jump from. She took a seven-foot plunge, landing with a crack as agonizing pain shot up her leg. But there was no voice, no redundant reminder that she had just fallen to a particularly painful landing.

Sobbing, and leaning on a large stick for support, Colette hobbled back to her cave.

So when the lonely scientist sustained her current injury, deep down she knew it was her death sentence. But she refused to allow it to interfere with her work. She resigned herself to moving as little as possible as she continued her work on a way to close the portals that were supplying her own planet with its very own infection.

"How can you be so sure that your permutations can account for the harmonic reflux?"

"What evidence do you have that a sustained assault could possibly cause the portal to collapse?"

"Look at your calculations, shoddy as always!"

"You always were the failure of the two."

Colette worked through the insults, the tireless companions her mind had seen fit to provide her with. Her eyes filled with tears as the chalk traced a web of hope across the wall.

"This was all your fault, you know."

That did it. Colette threw the chalk to the ground, shattering her last writing implement into a thousand tiny pieces that scattered across the floor of the cave.

"Don't you… don't you put this all on _me_." She screamed. "At least I'm trying to make it right! Where are _you_?"

Doctor Keller looked up at her from his wheelchair, his eyes full of spite. "I'm back at Black Mesa, where you _left us._"

There was a long, drawn out silence, and then Colette turned back to the wall. She had no more chalk; she couldn't possibly finish the permutations. She stared at the wall; tears of utter defeat welling up in her eyes, until she finally realized something.

She had finished it, without even knowing it; she had finished the calculations, and had in her possession the weapons to strike back at the Combine. They weren't guns, or cannons, or tanks, but numbers. They were what the universe was constructed out of, and she had finally found the right combination.

In a flash, Colette was throwing boxes aside, in a frantic search for what she had waited a decade to us. Finally she found it, an old Kodak camera, which she nearly dropped in all the excitement. The cave was lit up in a dazzle of light as she snapped off several pictures of the wall-spanning permutations. She waited in baited breath to see if the old film would develop, and sighed long and hard when the ghostly image of humanity's salvation finally appeared on the aged photos.

Holding the sacred relics in her hands, Colette knew that she had to make one final trip.

Her abdomen wretched in pain as the former Black Mesa scientist stumbled through the forest, heading East, for the nearest town. She wasn't sure what she would find there. When she had last seen it, nearly nine years ago, it was home to a group of people who had fled the nearby Combine-controlled city. Colette hoped they had managed to make it out here in the wilderness.

The sun began to set, and Colette wasn't sure how long it would be until she reached the settlement. She clutched her knapsack closer to her as she pondered insecurely whether or not she was even going the right way. She stopped short when she saw a large protrusion in the ground, not ten feet ahead of her. She eyed it queerly. It looked like a cross between a molehill and a small crater. Ever the scientist, even after these long years, she let curiosity take hold, and she inched towards it.

The earth around it seemed soft, recently moved. The edge sloped up, and then fell away, down into a black hole at the centre. Colette thought she could hear rustling below, possibly even footsteps. Tentatively, she crawled over the edge and tried to crane her neck downwards, to hear better. But the traction on her boots had worn off long ago, and Colette quickly felt herself slipping. Colette grasped for the edge of the hole, but her gloves could find no respite, and she felt herself fall.

It was too dark to see anything, but Colette felt the hard, rocky surface rise up to meet her. Pain came at her from all directions; her back, her stomach, her skull. But she didn't scream, she didn't cry out. Colette had only one single-minded reason for existence now, and it overrode all her other senses. Picking herself up, the beaten woman let her eyes adjust to the darkness, until she could make out her surroundings.

She shuddered as she realized where she was. The walls looked as though they had slowly been eaten away over time. It was the work of the Antlions, and their worker drones. They ate away at the planet's crust with their stomach bile, creating a tangled lattice of living space for their young. This passage, though, looked as though it hadn't seen any Antlion traffic for some time. Antlion dung caked the floor, but the majority of it was desiccated. Colette gave thanks for this small revelation, as she looked up into the small ribbon of light, slowly fading into twilight. She knew there was no way to climb back up, not in her condition. Colette looked forward; toward the direction she had been following on the surface, and continued on.

The longer she followed the cave, the more and more deserted it began to look. Normally the tunnels would be filled with Antlion larvae and caked with their fresh waste, but it wasn't so here. It almost looked as if it had been wiped clean, _sanitized._

"There you go again. You had the answer, and you had to let your curiosity lead you _here._" Colette let out a small squeak as she turned and saw Gina instep with her. Her face was filled with contempt. "Why couldn't you have stuck to the topside? Why did you have to stick your filthy nose in places reserved for Allah's lowest forms of crap?"

"I had _so_ much hope for you, Colette." That electric whirl accompanied the voice of Keller as his chair followed her. "But you've disappointed me, once again."

Colette bit back the insults and continued forward. Off in the distance she swore she heard footsteps.

"What were your plans when you even _made_ it to the settlement?" Gina cracked. "If it's even still _there_. What? Were you going to ride in on a white horse and tell them the answer to all their woes? How the hell did you plan to even implement it?"

Colette could see a dull orange glow at the end of the tunnel, not a colour that accompanied any variant of Antlion _she_ remembered. "Better people than me would know what to do with it," she mumbled.

"_That's right,_" she heard Keller snap behind her. "There were always better people than you. That Judith Mossman should have had your position, she would have made a _much_ better research associate than you ever had the potential of being."

Colette let herself turn to face her old mentor. "How… how could you say that?" She rummaged through the knapsack and retrieved the pictures. "These are going to _save_…"

Keller waved a dismissive hand, his face scrunched in a look of complete hatred. "Save _who?_ Don't you understand? _You're the only one left_."

Colette was silent for a moment. Keller sneered knowingly at her. "Everyone else is _dead_. Just like Gina and me. You left us at Black Mesa, and you left the rest of the world to die. The Combine have killed us all, there's no one _left_ to save."

Colette could feel the footsteps behind her drawing closer, but the revelation was too much to stomach. The woman dropped to her knees, the photographs falling to the ground beside her.

"I…I…"

Gina was next to her suddenly, a surprisingly reassuring hand gripping her shoulder. "It's okay, Colette, we understand you didn't mean it…"

The footsteps were finally behind her now, and they came to a stop.

"Forgiveness, Colette, its here."

Tears flowing down her cheeks, Colette turned and saw the figure standing behind her.

The monstrosity loomed above her; its eyes glowing a toxic green. A drab leather trench coat covered what was presumably an ugly and disfigured body. In its arms it cradled a mean looking device, one end had a small tube, glowing a sickening green, while the barrel of the weapon looked like the business end of a flame-thrower.

Colette, though, felt no fear. This was the angel Gabriel sent to forgive her, sent to take her back to her friends, to the rest of humanity, since there was no one here left to protect, no one here left to save. As the Cremator, the Combine's preferred form of clean-up, raised its immolator to dispatch her, Colette gripped the photos against her scuffed breast plate, smiling as the flame and the toxic chemicals ate away at her flesh.

* * *

(A/N: As always, reviews welcome!)


	9. Year Eleven

Disclaimer: We don't own _Half-Life._

_**Sidelines**_

_**Year Eleven by BlindAcquiescence**_

"He's late."

"You said that two minutes ago, must we really go over this again?"

The two men, clad in their regulation civilian denims, sat on the decrepit couch in an equally decrepit apartment. An old, dirty light bulb glowed, flickering unreliably and casting ghostly shadows across the walls. Not that either men believed in ghosts; the monsters of this world were much worse.

"Rosenberg, you don't think he was…"

But the older man silenced his colleague. "Don't even suggest it, Barney can take care of himself. He's been doing this for ten years, he'll be doing it for another ten."

Walter Bennett promptly fell silent. The two former employees of Black Mesa were serving as contacts for the Eastern European resistance for their counterparts in the west. Through the use of underground railroads, cobbled together dune buggies, and even a small row boat, they had made their way from the coast of France to their current hiding place in what was once Munich, now labelled City 14 by their Combine Overlords for 'ease of supply distribution'. Rosenberg puffed indignantly at the thought.

"If what Eli said was true, he and Kleiner plan to resurrect teleportation," Walter mumbled. They'd had this discussion a dozen times, in a dozen different safe houses. "Is that such a wise idea, given that the same technology has created the current situation? Aren't we only inviting more misfortune?"

"I'll discuss that with Eli, but it seems like they're dead set on bringing it back. If they've got the combined intellect of Mossman, Kleiner _and_ that arrogant ass Magnusson, I think they can pull it off."

Walter smiled slightly at the Magnusson comment. It had become a running joke since the end of the war that Magnusson was good for only two things: his incredible intellect, and the ease at which his features could be turned into humorous caricatures that the rebels under him found amusing to scribble in their down time, _if_ he let them have any. In any case, Magnusson didn't find it as amusing as everyone else seemed to.

Not that there had been any scribbling lately. Rosenberg and Bennett had strict orders that there should be no intelligence brought with them, for fear of discovery. This would be the first face-to-face contact between the eastern and western groups, and Rosenberg wasn't about to let the Combine take the one weapon humanity had left; information.

Besides, the old scientist was excited to see his colleagues once again.

The weather outside was bitter and cold, as dirty snow fell from the sky in an almost picturesque way. Rosenberg huddled his shabby blanket closer, and felt a pang of sadness when he mused that he couldn't remember the last time he celebrated Christmas.

Suddenly there were frantic boot steps in the hallway outside. In an instant Rosenberg was on his feet, sliding up next to the door as Bennett hid behind the couch. Reaching behind him, he pulled his Glock-16 out of the waistband of his pants and held it confidently at the threshold. In the decade since the occupation, Rosenberg prided himself on the idea that he had transformed himself from mild-mannered scientist into a competent fighter.

The old man's lip curled up in the hint of a smile. Bespectacled heroism seemed to be the exclusive realm of another Black Mesa employee.

The boot steps came closer, and began to slow their frantic pace, though the pace of Rosenberg's pulse did anything but follow suit. In the light shining under the doorway, he saw two shadows come to a halt in front of the door. The old man held his breath, finger on the trigger.

"Flash."

Rosenberg exhaled loudly. "Thunder," his voice squeaked.

The door flew open and the haggard form of Barney Calhoun stumbled in. Rosenberg immediately assessed Barney's condition.

"Good God, man. You've been shot!" he cried, seeing the small rips in the fabric of Barney's own denim coveralls.

Barney, USP match pistol held limply in one hand, looked down at himself in confusion and saw the bullet hole right above his abdomen, and the other just below his right pectoral.

"Oh, that." He ripped open the front of his shirt, revealing a Kevlar vest. It was small, the concealable kind that police had worn under their uniforms before the war. Barney must have salvaged it from somewhere. "I'm fine, it just hurts like a motherbitch is all. Now doc, we need to get out of here," he said, rushing over to the windows and looking out of the bottom corner of them cautiously.

"Where's our contact? What's going on, Barney?"

Calhoun had met them in France and followed them on their route to Black Mesa East, an ugly name if you asked Rosenberg. Eli had told them he would organise for the man who had rescued them from Black Mesa to escort them. Rosenberg couldn't have been happier. But this was the first sign of trouble. Barney had left them several hours before to make contact with the next resistance operative, who had seats for them on the next civilian train to City 17.

"He snitched. He wasn't at the rendezvous, but Civil Protection sure as hell was." Barney absentmindedly thumbed the holes in his denim. "They're better shots than they used to be." He stood up and checked his magazine. "Look doc, they'll be here any minute. We need to get the hell outta dodge, and fast. I've got some friends who are gonna help you guys get out of the city."

Rosenberg could hear the sirens outside; Civil Protection must be near their block by now. "What about you…"

Barney was at the window, watching a group storm the lobby of the building below.

"Oh God, we're doomed!" Bennett cried.

Barney ignored him and looked at Rosenberg with an apology in his eyes. "Look doc, this is how it's got to be. You and Walter…" He opened the window and looked out below. "You guys are gonna follow this fire escape, it'll take you to the building next to this one…" The door at the end of the hallway burst open, and Rosenberg could hear the wood splinter. The muffled sounds of Civil Protection warbling at each other echoed.

"Christ, they're right down the hall!" Walter ran to the other side of the room. Barney pointed to the quivering scientist.

"They don't know what unit we're in. We need to move fast. Get over here!"

But Walter preferred to huddle behind the bar in the kitchen. The man reached his hand out to Barney. "Give me your gun!"

Rosenberg came to Bennett's side, trying to pull him to his feet. "Walter, _come on_. They'll be here any-"

And suddenly the door burst open, a masked metro-cop brandishing a stun-stick in one hand, and his pistol in the other.

"_Halt! Cease and desist anti-citizens! By order section 1128 you are remanded…" _The back of the officer's mask blew out, as bits of bone, blood, and brain flew out into the hall. The metro-cop fell against the doorway and slid to the floor.

Barney looked over at Rosenberg, smoke billowing from the end of his Glock, which shook slightly in his tight grip.

"Jesus doc, good shot." But Barney had little time before the window of the kitchen broke open and two CP's crawled in, their pistols popping off shots.

Bennett cried out, and crawled across the room to his hiding place behind the couch. Rosenberg, his pistol cracking wildly, made for the window with Barney.

"Walter!" Barney screamed, his own pistol taking several more accurate shots at the metrocops. "Bennett! Get over here!" But the scientist either didn't hear or refused to, as more cops burst in through the open door, stumbling over their fallen comrade.

Rosenberg saw the look in Barney's eyes, the defeat, and the dismay.

"Barney, we need to help him!" Rosenberg cried, but a bullet whizzed by, clipping his left arm. It left a gash that burned and the doctor dropped his pistol. Barney let several shots fly, his anger apparent in the growls and yells of despair.

Finally the metrocops overwhelmed them. Barney ushered Rosenberg outside, bullets pinging off the walls.

"Go, doc, go! I'm right behind you!" Barney crawled out onto the fire escape. The two men frantically scaled the rusted metal ladder, finding the roof devoid of enemies.

Rosenberg heard Barney grunt next to him and looked over, seeing the former security guard throw his empty pistol aside in annoyance.

"Over there," he said, running across the roof top towards the next building. The gap wasn't wide, but it was by no means a hop over. Rosenberg gave himself enough distance and took a running jump, landing on his knees, grunting in pain, the gash on his arm continuing its steady burn. Barney landed, doing a roll and coming up as if it were second nature. He sure had changed in this last decade.

The men hopped several more rooftops until they found one that at one time before the war had been in the middle of construction. Tarps and boards littered the roof, and the two men took shelter underneath.

The snow fell all around them, and the air was bitterly cold. Rosenberg huddled close to Barney for those intense four hours. They heard Civil Protection patrol the streets below, and more than once heard the whirl of the anti-gravity engine of a scanner propel itself across the rooftops. Finally it was still, and they could no longer bear the cold. Barney crawled out from below the tarp and told Rosenberg to stay put.

Several minutes later, Barney silently signalled Rosenberg to follow him, leading him into the uppermost floor of the abandoned building. Barricading themselves in one of the few intact units, Rosenberg nearly burst out in joy when they found several grimy blankets below a decaying mattress.

They were silent for a long time, as they sat warming in the small apartment. Finally Rosenberg spoke.

"What happened to Walter?"

Barney didn't offer an immediate reply.

"Barney?"

"He trusted me," Barney sighed. "He trusted me to keep him safe. And I let them take him." Rosenberg could almost hear Barney moaning in anguish, inside his mind.

"You had no choice, you tried to…"

But Barney simply turned away, facing the wall.

Finally, once the sun began to rise, Barney stirred.

"I need to get in contact with our friends. I won't be gone long." He silently made his way out without any objection from Rosenberg, who could tell Calhoun had no desire to dispute the issue.

Sitting alone in the hovel of a hideout, Rosenberg had time to think. He had lost another friend, in a long line of people lost to the Combine. He hugged the dingy blanket tighter, as if the cruelty of the world was threatening to suck what was left of his will to live right out of him.

But there was still hope, he tried to tell himself. He warmed his spirit by the flames of that hope.

_Shephard, Freeman. _Those two names held power, one on this side of the planet, and one on the other. But it wasn't just those two mythical figures. People like Calhoun were the ones keeping the fire alive, and that's what mattered most. Let people have their legends, their stories about small men performing great deeds. Rosenberg didn't have a story, he had an _actual_ hero, and he took comfort in that.

Calhoun returned later, three other resistance members in tow.

"We're ready doc. The train's not an option anymore, obviously," he spat. "But we got a plan B."

Rosenberg smiled wryly. "There's always a plan B."

Calhoun let a smile wander across his wary face. "Doc, I don't think I have any other kind."

* * *

(A/N: Hey everyone, thanks for the reviews! Keep them coming!)


	10. Year Fifteen

Disclaimer: We don't own _Half-Life._

_**Sidelines**_

_**Year Fifteen by Super Chocolate Bear**_

"_Good morning, and welcome to the Black Mesa Transit System. This train is inbound…"_

_Barney looked up at the top of the tram car, staring at the speakers in every corner. Nothing came out._

"_Inbound. Inbound. Inbound."_

_Scowling, he scratched his head beneath his helmet. He always did this. Wedged on his helmet before he got to work before he picked up his helmet from the armoury._

_Wait, what?_

_Why was he in his armour and helmet on the tram?_

"_Good luck, Mr Calhoun! I'll see you on the other side!"_

"_Gah! Barney, I really don't appreciate you sneaking up on me in such a manner."_

_The train came to a stop, and Gordon pushed himself to his feet. "Just don't lose all of your money."_

_Barney smiled. "I know, I know, I still owe you the beer. I won't forget."_

_His smile faded. "Wait. Wait, Gordon!"_

His head whipped up from where it had been languishing back on the seat. Jolted awake by a bump on the track, Barney let out the quietest of grunts before bringing his head up, rubbing his eyes slowly and looked around the carriage. Only two or three citizens, and the exact same ones he had entered the train with.

Lazily, he wiped some drool that had gathered on his chin while he slept. He remembered a time that would have embarrassed him. Now it was just one more thing he didn't care about; one more priority that had been shuffled far down on the 'important scale' after the whole world went to hell in a bloody, violent hand basket. An absent hand ran through rough, greying hair. That was another thing that didn't seem important anymore. The sight of his first grey hair would have usually evoked some kind of huge emotional whirlwind, full of expensive convertibles and young, twenty-something women.

As it was, it was just another day staring in the cracked, murky mirror he had managed to cobble together back at the City 14 base. So he shaved as best he could and went to work.

That was a few years ago, at least. It was hard to tell nowadays. He looked out the window. The view was no longer the barren, dying coast. Buildings, tunnels and dormant trains passed by.

_Here I come, Walter._

Or so he hoped. The City 14 resistance had been tracking him through the Vortigaunts and other outlets for years now. One time they even thought they had rescued him, only for a squad of soldiers to happen upon the attempt and blow it to hell. At the moment, it seemed like Walter Bennett was still alive, and in no danger of being 'converted' or 'upgraded'. His knowledge was too precious. Last piece of intelligence City 14 received, Walter was being taken to Nova Prospekt. That tore it. Previously, all of Barney's requests for a transfer to City 17 had been denied. It wasn't a priority, and others needed the transport more desperately. Which was fair enough. But if anyone was going to get Bennett out of this shithole of a situation, it was going to be him.

He owed it to the man.

However, as a helpful member of the resistance in City 14 had said, the odds of him getting to City 17 before Walter were too depressing to calculate. For starters, he had been taken on a Razor train to Nova Prospekt. Even if Barney had boarded a train to City 17 hours before Walter had been dispatched, he still wouldn't have arrived in time. On top of that, it had taken him a week to organise the transfer with the… 'proper authorities'.

Even thinking the words left a foul taste in his mouth. Sniffing, he rubbed his nose. Sea air always blocked his sinuses. Ah, for a Walgreens. Somehow Barney didn't think that would be high on Breen's 'I must save this from the Combine war machine' list. It was probably all Shakespeare and Opera. Damn shame. Probably not one episode of the A-Team in there.

The train started pulling into the station, and Barney pushed himself to his feet with his hands on his knees. He had no desire to touch any of the poles and handlebars that were around this train. That was something that had stayed with him after using the New York subway _pre_-Combine. God knows what it would be like now. Probably some kind of breeding ground for Combine genetic weapons.

Barney watched as the other passengers lethargically picked up their luggage. He was tempted to think of them as zombie like. But, having seen and killed _actual _zombies, somehow the metaphor didn't quite apply.

As he saw the amount of Civil Protection officers gathered in the station, Barney was glad he had opted _not _to bring any luggage. He didn't have any possessions anyway. Just his old engagement ring and a picture of Lauren, and those he had left with Rosenberg back in City 14 before he set off. The only things he could have brought with him were weapons, and somehow he didn't think the Combine would blindly wave him through customs with a handful of grenades and some handguns wedged in-between some shirts.

The train jolted to a halt, and everyone slowly spilled out onto the platform. Barney easily ignored the cameras as he made his way towards the CPs. He tried not to make it obvious how close he in fact was to crapping his pants. Every time he did this, it was always the same. He had thought that over time he would have gotten used to it. But no. Every single time he approached a group of these bastards, there always that worry.

What if they picked him?

It was entirely possible they could do so without even knowing of his resistance connections. Most likely they would just be selecting an example for any others who thought they were safe.

They waved him through, far more intent on the saddened citizens behind him that desperately clutched their bags. Barney didn't even look back as he proceeded through the turnstiles. He tried to ignore the pleading. He especially tried to ignore the sound of one man being beaten.

Damn, he hated CPs.

His room wasn't much different than the ones given to citizens in City 14, except maybe a little more dilapidated. And far more crowded. At least five people to a single room and one working toilet for each floor. Barney had tried not to think about what kind of germs were lurking in the brown stained sink as he washed his hands.

Settling down in the corner of a room, Barney huddled up, trying to conserve warmth in the frigid room. He had considered taking a walk around the city, but quickly dissuaded himself of that course of action. Besides not needing to draw attention to himself, he had no idea when his resistance contact would try to get in touch with him. So he would stay put.

Night was drawing in, anyway. The Civil Protection night shift was not something someone wanted to get on the wrong side of. He tried to relax and not think about the people he knew who already lived in this city. Eli, Dr Kleiner… he'd heard that Alyx had grown up quite a bit. And yet he hadn't seen or spoken to any of them for so long. Not since that day. All other correspondence didn't begin until a few years ago when the resistance cells started talking to each other, and even then it was through couriers and text messages sent on the most rudimentary of computers - anything more advanced and the Combine would pick it up. But right now, he needed sleep. No point in getting excited about something that may not even happen. And Bennett was the target at the moment. Nothing mattered until Barney had found him.

"Hey."

The guttural snarl of a voice brought Barney's attention up, and he locked eyes with a surprisingly big man. How the hell had he managed that on Combine rations? Spotting the jagged shape poking from the mans' pocket, Barney hazarded a guess that he was probably one of those 'I'm going to make the best of a bad situation' people, and promptly took it upon themselves to steal other people's food and supplies and then beat the living shit out of anyone who objected.

Two scrawny henchmen behind him did nothing to dissuade Barney of that fact. Barney stared up at him.

"Yeah?"

"You're in my spot."

The two henchmen snickered, and Barney looked down and around him.

"Oh," he said, dragging himself up to his feet. "Sorry."

Moving over beside the fully occupied sofa, Barney slid down against some bare wall and rested his back against it.

Heavy footsteps made him frown, and he opened his eyes again.

"What?" he grunted.

"You're in my spot."

Henchmen numbers one and two snickered.

Barney clenched his jaw and let his teeth grind a little before taking a breath. "Okay," he sighed, "fine. Off I go to another spot."

He got up and walked to another corner of the room, quickly settling in for the night.

And sure enough, there was his chauffeur again, reminding him of proper etiquette and behaviour in this civilised world.

"You're in my spot."

"Okay, seriously," Barney grunted, clambering to his feet. "How fat is your ass that you need three separate corners of the room?"

At first, shock reigned supreme. Not just with the big man and his henchmen, but with everyone else in the room.

Then the big man twitched. "No-one talks to me like that."

Looking around, Barney saw just how much attention was being directed at him. Attention he _didn't _need.

"Look, just… leave me alone. Let me sleep. You can understand that, right? I mean, we're all tired around here."

Big man nodded. "Yeah. I can understand that."

"Right, good."

"But I can't go to sleep. You're in my spot."

Henchmen snickered again.

Big man grabbed him roughly by the collar and reached for whatever jagged weapon he had in his pocket. Barney slammed a quick knee into his groin and shoved him back into his esteemed colleagues, sending them all tumbling to the floor. Walking over, he stamped a hand down on the big mans' weapon hand, forcing him to drop the broken porcelain tile.

"A tile?" he sighed. "You were gonna stab me with a _tile_? Where's it from? The bathroom?"

The big man nodded.

"Well, that's sure a potent weapon, buddy. But seriously, you didn't need to stab me with it. Hell, wipe it on my tongue and you'd give me the runs for a month."

He kicked the tile away and leaned forward, putting pressure on big man's hand.

"You gonna leave me alone now?"

Big man nodded.

"Yeah. Now I don't mean 'nod until he goes away then jump him with my goons' leave me alone, I mean 'don't touch him ever again' leave me alone. Yeah? We okay with that?"

After a pause, big man nodded again.

Barney sighed. "Outstanding."

With that done, he returned to his first corner and nestled in as comfortably as he could manage. After watching the big man stumble out of the room with his buddies in tow, Barney tried to ignore the awed looks of his fellow citizens before dropping off.

A loud thumping bang from outside jolted Barney from his dreamless slumber. Finding yet more drool on his chin, he quickly swiped it aside as he hauled himself to his feet. Wood cracked on the other side of the misted window-doors on the other side of the room, and citizens backed away from it as though it were an out of control fire.

Someone cried out from the room across the hallway. Moving slowly, Barney crept across the room, the stunned and fearful looks directed at him doing nothing to dissuade him. As he reached the door, he put his ear to the wall beside it, not wanting some rogue CP boot to come smashing through and give him a bloody ear.

A CP radio crackled ominously. _"Target still not found. Sterilisation procedure in effect."_

Barney bit down on his lip. Someone knew about him. And more importantly, someone had _told_. His gaze whipped around the room, settling on the big man. Judging by his terrified demeanour directed entirely at the door, he certainly wasn't the one to blame. Well, someone had blabbed. And everyone in the building was suffering because of it. 'Sterilisation' was never a good thing as far as citizens were concerned.

"Sorry Walter," he muttered, before stepping through the doors and out into the hallway. Two panicked citizens lurched forward and slammed the doors closed behind him.

The CPs didn't notice; they were too busy knocking the crap out of someone in the doorway ahead of Barney.

"Hey," he said, coming forward and all too ready to put his hands up. "You can stop now, I-"

The lead officer's blank helmeted eyes settled on him, and he pointed Barney out to his other comrades.

"_Get him!"_

They all charged forward, and Barney prepared himself for the impact. Instead, they thundered past him, heading for someone at the far end of the corridor. Barney turned, watching them go with a frozen look of complete idiocy.

"What… the hell."

Someone poked their head out of the doorway behind him, and he watched as a bruised citizen quickly ducked back inside. As he curiously made his way to the broken down doorway, he heard some mighty fierce whispering from inside.

"Get out of here!"

A female voice answered. "But… he's just been-"

"Just go! You're more important, go!"

Barney nodded and looked back down the corridor. Whoever the CPs had spotted and chased after, it must have been a decoy. Whoever this girl was they were protecting, she was obviously important. Stepping inside, however, he found no-one there. At least, no-one female.

"Wait… what?" He looked around the bare room. "Where is she?"

Two citizens tended to a third, severely wounded on the floor. The one on the left, greying hair far exceeding Barney's, looked up at him warningly.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"But I need to-" he grunted in frustration, running a hand through his hair. "If she's important, I need to talk to her."

The man stood up. "Again. I don't. Know. What you're talking about."

Barney sighed. "Look, I-" He stopped as he noticed the most miniscule of gaps at the window behind the two men on the floor. Except windows in these buildings weren't supposed to open.

"You should cover your tracks better." He went to the window and yanked it up, expecting some kind of city ambience to wash over him. Instead, all he got was the slightest whistle of the cold City 17 air.

The man made a move for him, and Barney put up a hand. "Look. I'm not here for any CP thing. In fact, I thought they were here for me. It's only a matter of time before they recognise me, and then it's bad news for the whole building. Harbouring one fugitive you _might _be able to get away with. Barely. But two? Come on."

CP radios crackled down the corridor, and the man only glanced at the ominously empty doorway once before giving Barney a nod of consent.

"Okay. Now close this window properly, for Christ's sake."

And then he was on his way. Shimmying across the ledge, he was suddenly glad for the cover of night, and for the smog the Combine factories churned out that stopped any moonlight from illuminating him to any Civil Protection goons below. It didn't take him long before he was on the next rooftop.

That was when he noticed her. She must have waited to see if anyone would follow. Stupid girl; that kind of stuff would get her killed, and quick. Barney gave chase, hopping over gaps between buildings and tiptoeing along crumbling ledges before finally following her ghostly shape through an open window and into the attic of some old building.

Her shadow disappeared down a stairway in the middle of the room, and Barney raced down. A few steps down, his foot plunged through one of the steps, sending him tumbling painfully down until he crashed against the wall at the foot of the stairs.

"Oh… ow."

The familiar sensation of a gun barrel pressed against the back of his neck. He froze.

"Who are you?"

The youth in that voice made Barney's heart ache. Too young to be holding a gun and witnessing innocent people being beaten by CPs.

He groaned and turned over, pushing himself up until he was sat against the wall, looking up at the stairs from whence he had fallen.

"Someone needs to look at those stairs."

"You should have skipped everything except the third, fifth and seventh ones."

"Oh," he said, smiling and nodding. "Booby traps, huh? Nice."

He couldn't get a good look at her in the light. But he was all but certain it was her.

"You're Alyx, right?"

The gun faltered.

"Alyx Vance?"

She took an audible breath. "How do you know my name?"

Barney smiled. "Because I knew you when you were small enough to fit in the nook of my arm."

Even in pitch black darkness, the scepticism in her face was apparent.

"Oh, c'mon. You don't remember me? What about all the good times we had? Geez, you play blocks with a kid for years and she doesn't even have the courtesy to remember your name…"

Silence was the only response. But the grip on the gun was relaxed.

"Nice gun, by the way."

Alyx pointed the gun away from him, studying it a little. "Thanks." She put it away. "You're the security guard, aren't you? The one who knows Rosenberg?"

"Well, _yeah_, if you want my business résumé," he said, grunting his way to his feet. "But among other things, I was friends with your dad, Gordon and Dr Kleiner."

"You knew Gordon Freeman?"

"You kidding? I got him drunk more times than I can count. Or did he get me drunk? Whatever. We were good buddies." Barney looked around warily. "And _we _need to get out of here."

Alyx still wasn't sure, and studied him out of the corner of her eye. Finally, she nodded to a lift in the next room. "This way."

Leading him down into the guts of City 17, Alyx effortlessly weaved her way through a labyrinth of tunnels and secret passageways, finally ending with a door hidden behind a drinks dispenser.

It had been so long since he had heard the sounds of the lab. Liquids bubbling, gauges beeping, devices humming, weird looking things doing… weird looking things. It was like coming home. A few beeps and clicks sounded from the far side of the lab, and the wall slid open.

A rather beleaguered Dr Kleiner stumbled through, wearing striped pyjamas and plaid slippers. Barney grinned. Only Dr Kleiner would spend resistance resources on finding pyjamas and slippers.

He rubbed his eyes before he slipped on his glasses. "Alyx? Do you realise what time of the night it is? I hope you didn't go wandering off-"

His eyes adjusted to the lenses, and he finally twigged the presence of someone else in the room.

"Barney?"

Barney was grinning so hard his face hurt. "Hey doc. Long time no see."

"Yes indeed. It's, uh…" Dr Kleiner's smile seemed similarly locked. "It's delightful to see you again."

"You lose the keys to your office yet?"

Dr Kleiner closed his eyes and shook his head. "Not as of late. Although there was that one time a few years ago when I managed to lock everyone else _into _the lab and myself out. Most troubling, I can tell you."

"Yeah, doc," he said, trying to resist the urge to hug the living daylights out of the old man. And God, how he'd aged. Barney thought that _he _looked rough after fifteen years of fighting the Combine. Kleiner looked like he would break if he fell over.

"I see you have met Alyx," Kleiner said, breaking him from his thoughts. "She has had something of a growth spurt since you last saw her."

"Yeah, I noticed. I caught her running around in my building." He tried his best not to sound scolding, but it happened anyway. Alyx sent him a suitably indignant scowl. Here she was, reuniting him with his long lost friend, and he throws her to the wolves.

Hopefully she wouldn't hold it against him.

* * *

A month later, she was still holding it against him. When she had cheerily volunteered to cut his pretty straggly hair, it was after a month of relative peace between the two. If he was honest, he was just glad to have someone with a stable hand putting scissors near his head. The quivering hand of Dr Kleiner didn't inspire the greatest confidence.

But, looking in the mirror and seeing the random tufts of salt and pepper hair that sprouted out in all directions, it was clear that the young Ms Vance was nowhere near the forgiveness stage.

The hair was one clue.

The other was the fact that she said, "Serves you right for telling," before huffily leaving Kleiner's lab for Black Mesa East.

Barney ran a tentative hand over his head. A visit to the Dr Kleiner Hair Salon wasn't sounding too bad right now. But he supposed the important thing was that his head would fit in the Civil Protection helmet much more comfortably now.

He looked down at the ghoulish helmet, nervously fingering it with gloved hands. He hadn't worn gloves in _years_. The closest he'd managed was a towel he had wrapped around his hands on a particularly cold night on a City 14 rooftop. But these gloves weren't particularly comforting or warm. The creaking leather left him with a somewhat less pleasant feeling. It made him feel slimy, dirty.

Or, to be more dramatic, evil.

Cue maniacal laughter.

Getting the uniform hadn't been too hard. One of the civilian service stations had seen to that. It seemed there could never be too many vicious, merciless bullies roaming the streets in the name of the lovely and kind Combine. And it was agreed that he was the only one who could really do this. Alyx was too young, Eli had one leg, Dr Kleiner was… Dr Kleiner, and all the other rebels were too afraid of the Combine to ever consider keeping calm in their ranks. Eli had also pointed out that he should be used to such duties, considering his job back at Black Mesa.

Barney hadn't appreciated the comparison.

Taking a breath, he slipped the helmet on, doing up the clips on the top and bottom. His breathing reverberated through the nozzle on the helmet, and Barney felt like he was falling to the dark side of the Force. And that he was someone's father. The lenses of the helmet were remarkably clear. He had expected some cruel joke on the part of the Combine that smeared the CP's vision, rendering them vulnerable to attack.

But no. Clarity, and in high definition, ma.

After checking that his weapons were where they should be (and uttering a silent prayer that he wouldn't have to use them), Barney whirled on his heel and stepped out of the changing room and into the train station. Well, he _said _changing room. It was an old waiting room for first class passengers. Now it was just a room with slightly less paint falling off the walls than everywhere else.

As opposed to the interrogation rooms, which were far worse than most rooms Barney had seen. The blood stains smeared across the floor around a gruesome looking chair were less than encouraging.

He was gruffly told that he would be taking care of 'processing', which basically meant extracting 'the truth' from anyone who was unlucky enough to be randomly stopped. The only way to really avoid such things was to be working for the Combine. And then it was the citizens who were likely to kill you, so really… you were dead either way.

Better dead batting for the right team. At least, that's what Barney figured.

He was given about half an hour to himself to get used to the massive computer terminal that took up the wall, but instead spent the time exploring the room. A locked door was easily opened with a firm kick, revealing a dilapidated storage room behind. Following a ladder in the middle of the room, he found that it led to a platform above his head, where there was a fairly accessible window.

Clambering up himself, he stumbled across some crates he could pile up and found himself looking down a not insubstantial drop to the grassy alleyway below. But if people grabbed onto the vines running up and down the wall, they should be able to make it without too much injury. An ajar door at the end of the alleyway caught his attention.

Calling up schematics on the computer, he found that the door led to the recruitment centre, which in itself was just next to the plaza. And thus, an escape route was born.

Every single citizen who came through had no idea what Barney was talking about. Even if they did and were horrendously bad at hiding it, he let them go, giving them the directions to get the hell out of dodge. Luckily some gruesome device suspended above the torture chair was designed to completely destroy anybody sat in it, so there were no questions about what he had done to his detainees.

Shit, the higher ups must have thought he was a merciless bastard.

That was probably why he was picked for a raid.

Nothing special, he was told. Just something to teach the locals who was in charge. Barney doubted there was anyone in City 17 who _didn't _know, but he kept that to himself.

And so, there he was, rocking from side to side in one of the Combine troop vans, somewhere he had never imagined he would be, and certainly not from this side of the equation. Seeing all the white masks staring at him from the darkness was a haunting experience. He doubted he would forget it anytime soon. Although he figured that worse was to come.

There was little warning when the time came. Just a green light and a grinding beep that accompanied the door on the side of the van sliding open. They all filed out and charged into the building.

Barney had been preparing himself for this eventuality. He would have to come to terms with that fact that he would see innocent people beaten, even killed. It wasn't pleasant, and it would probably put him opposite a psychiatrist for the rest of his life (if shrinks were around after this was all over), but it was something that had to be done in order that the entire human race be saved.

At least, that's how Dr Kleiner put it, enthusiastic finger waving in the air and all.

Somehow, 'coming to terms' and 'going through with' were different things entirely. He had thought he would be able to get away with simply looking menacing, but not actually doling out any of the punishment himself. That was how he justified it, at least in his own little Barney world.

But something about the Combine soldier that accompanied them on the raid made him itchy. He was watching each and every one of them, evaluating and acting as though every single Civil Protection officer was itching to have Combine machinery jammed into their guts and have their will taken away.

But then again, thinking about some of his 'comrades'…

The raid went 'smoothly' (Barney didn't want to think about raids like these going positively in any way, shape or form). The people had no idea they were coming. Most were asleep, huddled around one another for warmth. Only one was awake, a woman sitting on a windowsill and watching the quiet streets. A CP beside Barney rushed him instantly, the baton thudding sickeningly against her skull and cracking the window at the end of the swing.

Barney, all too aware of the soldier's eyes on him, tried to make himself look busy without actually _doing _anything. He walked to different people, making idle threats and shoving them around. The sheer terror alone made Barney want to scream and kill all the Combine in the room. But now wasn't the right time. He knew that.

But every part of his soul that had wanted to join the police and protect people when he was a boy was tearing at his insides, dying with every whimper and plea that came from the innocent people around him.

"_You."_

Praying he wasn't the target of the soldier's comment, he went about his business, shoving a rather terrified girl to the floor as gently as he could manage while still trying to make it look nasty. It was not an easy balance to achieve.

"_J27."_

Shit. That was him all right.

Barney turned and stood to attention. His fellows, while curious about the contact, still kept on going about their work. They knew better than to be seen as slackers in front of the higher-ups.

"Sir."

"_You're not doing anything."_

He gulped, hoping the white mask would conceal it somehow. "Sir?"

The soldier just cocked his head. With a movement so fast Barney had to fight the instinct to flinch, the soldier grabbed the girl that had just been dropped to the floor.

"_Get some information out of her."_

"Sir, I have already questioned her. She doesn't know anything."

His superior tossed the girl roughly to the floor. Light blue lenses glared into his own. _"I said… get some information out of her. Do you understand me?"_

It was impossible _not _to understand him. The soldier knew that the girl knew nothing. Hell, everyone in the room knew. But that wasn't the point here. The point was to show everyone just who was in control of this planet and its people.

Tears streamed down the girl's face. She couldn't have been more than twenty years old.

"Please…"

Barney's jaw tightened, and he pulled out the baton. Trying to literally question her would get him nowhere. The soldier was more likely to shoot him for insubordination if he did anything but use his baton on the defenceless girl. The resistance _needed _him on the inside. He was saving lives. Already today he had saved a dozen people. That alone would justify what he was about to do.

Logically.

Barney closed his eyes. _God… please forgive me._

He hit her around the head, aiming for a spot that he hoped wouldn't leave her with a concussion. Barney stopped and glanced to the soldier. He was expecting more.

The girl whimpered on the floor, holding out a hand to someone behind Barney. The man who had been huddled with her when they had all burst in shook his head and scrambled to the corner of the room. Barney hated him for it. He hated him, he hated the CPs, he hated the Combine…

"_J27. Continue."_

But he hated this bastard all the more. Barney struck her in the midsection, and her groan mixed with sobs. He glanced up to the small label on the soldier's uniform.

EF73.

Barney burned the number into his brain as he struck again.

* * *

The crowbar was smooth, especially under his gloves. With a grimace, he tugged them off with his teeth before angrily tossing them to the ground. He wanted to rip off the entire CP uniform and burn the fucking thing, but pleading words from Kleiner had managed to stay his hand. For now.

But he honestly didn't know how long he could go on with the job. If he was going to be called upon to do that all the time… what if he got promoted? What if he was put in charge of a CP unit and had to oversee beatings like that by the dozen?

What then?

"What then, Barney? What then?" he muttered, jumping to his feet and pacing around the lab, swinging the crowbar around idly as he went.

He knew Kleiner was watching him from where he stood next to those vats of orange bubbly stuff. Barney remembered wishing it was an energy drink or something, but no. Something to do with balancing the overflow ratio of the teleporters' aspect… something. It was the kind of thing that Gordon would usually translate for him.

"_It stops the teleporter from overheating."_

"_See, doc, why couldn't you just say that?"_

The barest hint of a smile flickered across his face. Apparently, that was all Kleiner needed.

"Uh, Barney…"

The ex-security guard gave him the smallest, least offensive glare he could.

Kleiner didn't notice. "I realise you aren't feeling particularly… talkative. But I'm expecting a call from Eli any minute, and I really can't afford to leave these readouts-"

Faster than he meant to, Barney brought the crowbar to his head and saluted. Kleiner ducked his head a little, and Barney wanted to cry.

"Sorry," he mumbled, wandering through the open wall-door thing and into the under construction teleporter lab. Once there, he put his arms out straight and rested against the green shelving that held all manner of equipment that, to Barney, just looked like lots of DVD players stacked on top of each other.

"Come on… get it together, you cry-baby…"

A burst of static brought his head up. It was the old TV perched atop the shelving on his right.

"_Izzy? -ou there?"_

Barney walked over. "Hey doc."

Eli's thoroughly wrinkled face smiled, revealing yet more. _"Barney. How are you?"_

Christ. A loaded question, if ever there was one.

"_Barney?"_

"It's all good, doc."

Obviously not convincing in the least, Eli slid into a chair somewhere beneath Barney's line of sight. The sorrow on his face made Barney's insides burn a little. How dare he feel pity for him? He had no idea what he just had to do.

"_I'm sorry. I can't imagine-"_

"Let's-" he calmed himself. "…just leave it alone, okay?"

"_Barney, you need to talk about this before it eats-"_

He closed his eyes and sighed, smiling cruelly to himself. "Would you please, just… shut the hell up. For once? You scientists, all the time, yak, yak, yak. Where the hell's Gordon when you need him?"

Eli didn't answer, and Barney glared up at him.

"Huh? Where is he? Isn't he supposed to save us soon? That's what Messiahs do, isn't it? Then where the hell is he? Why isn't he here saving us _right now? _Where the hell was he when I had to beat an innocent girl, huh?"

Both Eli and the newly arrived Dr Kleiner sighed when he said that.

"_Barney…"_

Looking around to Dr Kleiner, he saw the frail old scientist avert his gaze before retreating into the main lab area.

"_I'm sorry."_

"It's fine."

"_No it's not."_

Barney clenched his jaw. "I know it's _not_, but…" He took a long breath, and let it out again. That was all that was stopping the tears at this point.

"Look… if _saying _'It's fine' gets me through the day, then that actually _is _fine. Even if _I'm _not fine. Get it?"

After a few moments of blank staring, Eli smiled. _"I went to Harvard and I don't get it."_

And Barney laughed. He actually laughed, bringing up his crowbar carrying hand to rub his forehead.

"Yeah… I know."

"_Barney?"_

"Yeah?"

"_Why do you have that crowbar?"_

"Helps me think."

"_Where's it from?"_

"You'll never guess."

"_Black Mesa?"_

Barney gasped theatrically. "Holy shit, you got it."

A broad smile was the response, and Eli leant back in his chair. _"It's not… __**his**_**, **_is it?"_

"What?" he asked, looking down at the weapon while he measured its heft. "The crowbar that laid waste to a hundred soldiers? The crowbar that tamed the mighty Gargantua? The crowbar that split the monstrous Nihilanth in two? _That _crowbar?"

Eli snorted a laugh. _"I had to ask."_

"Everyone does."

Both men were quiet for a moment, staring off into their own separate areas of space. Finally, Barney broke the silence.

"Look, doc… I'm not okay with this. And I probably never will be. But it's something I've got to do. It's for the future of the human race, right? I gotta have faith in that."

Eli leant forward, conspiratorially. _"Want to know a secret?"_

"Always."

"_I don't have faith in the future of humanity. Or God, or Buddha, or anything like that. But I've got Alyx. That's enough for me."_

Barney smiled. "You and me both, doc."

"_And besides, it's not __**your **__faith you've really got to worry about. It's the entire human races'. You __**know **__how we can beat the Combine. They don't. All they've got is hearsay of some scientist in a space suit running around a government facility from a decade and a half ago."_

"Geez, doc, way to make a guy feel old." He looked at the crowbar, holding it up to the light. "So what you're saying is… I'm just holding the torch for the next runner."

"_I guess you could say that."_

He nodded, staring at the gleaming weapon. "I think I will, doc." Smiling sadly, he held the crowbar in both hands, like a knight studying his sword.

"Whatever gets me through the day, right?"

* * *

(A/N: I love writing Barney, I really do.

Anyway, thanks for all the reviews so far. They're always appreciated, trust me.)


	11. Year Eighteen

Disclaimer: We don't own _Half-Life._

_**Sidelines**_

_**Year Eighteen by Super Chocolate Bear**_

The steady line broke jaggedly once more as the pencil snapped. Kleiner bit back the curse that would have made only himself blush. Barney would just smile at the exclamation as though he were a child trying to be a grown-up. Such a condescending attitude would infuriate any other man, but Dr Isaac Kleiner wasn't really one for those kinds of emotional outbursts.

If he was honest, it was because all of those things seemed so very small to him. Even before the Combine invaded and the fate of the entire planet rested on his diminutive shoulders, he had never felt particularly engaged with the rest of the world. Science. That was key. That was, in the end, what everything came down to. The emotional actions and impulses of others were all down to a mix of chemicals and electrical impulses. Even Dr Breen and the Combine, for all they had done, could be justified by the science.

Every wrong choice, every evil act… it all came down to science.

Of course, science didn't explain why his hand was so shaky as he tried to finish the ridiculously simple diagram before him. Why was he having trouble with this? He had drawn diagrams and written equations far more complicated in shape and size than this. And yet… here he was, his hand gripping the pencil too tightly, pressing it to the (all too precious and rare) paper until the tip snapped off.

Most frustrating.

Perhaps it was Barney distracting him. Yes, that must be it. He was the only thing that was different in the lab. He must somehow be affecting Kleiner's subconscious, making him nervous, precipitating adrenaline, which sent far too much energy through his body for the delicate operation his hand was performing, and… eureka. Snapped pencil it was.

Feeling somewhat relieved, Kleiner smiled and allowed himself a break from his drawing. No point continuing if his subconscious was going to make him break pencils left right and centre. Their pencil supply wasn't precisely overflowing, either. It had taken a year or so for Barney to find a pencil sharpener in one of the Combine garbage disposal depots. So much Earth history… Barney had been particularly distraught over a destroyed DVD box set of something called 'The Three Stooges'. The noises Barney had made when trying to describe the characters to him… Dr Kleiner was glad the DVDs could not be retrieved.

"Okay, doc. All done."

He blinked and looked up at Barney, who had haphazardly managed to make himself at home at the table beside the entrance to the lab. Kleiner felt a pang of guilt for how he had snapped at Barney for brazenly brushing aside all the devices that had been painstakingly assembled there. Luckily, nothing had been broken, so 'no harm, no foul', as Barney had put it.

Sports references. More complicated than quantum mechanics.

Achingly pushing himself up out of the hard plastic chair (luckily arthritis was not one of the ailments that had afflicted him in his… _somewhat_ older age), Dr Kleiner made his way over to the security guard. It amused Dr Kleiner that someone who had the utmost physical prowess in all matters violent would know how to assemble and use a sewing machine, but there was the proof, right in front of his eyes.

Displayed out in front of Barney like a tailor presenting a wedding dress to a bride-to-be was the civilian denim uniform that Kleiner had seen so many people wearing through the surveillance cameras. Although he had had no conception that they would be so… filthy. Barney's face indicated that Kleiner was to try it on. Sighing, Dr Kleiner took the top and trousers and moved to the teleportation lab, closing the wall behind him.

It didn't take him long to change, although Lamarr's unfaltering gaze was somewhat disturbing. Even though headcrabs had no eyes, he could still tell when he was being looked at, especially by his Heddy. It was amazing how attached one could get to something after only a few months of being in its presence. What had started out as a simple experiment had become a welcome companion.

Kleiner did up the last button of his shirt. He hated it. The itchiness, for one thing, would surely drive him insane if he were exposed to it for too long. And there was something about how… _uniform _it was. There _was_ a certain irony to that observation, considering he had always been most comfortable in the white lab coats and striped ties that everyone in the Black Mesa facility wore. But that was different. That symbolised a unified effort towards a magnificent goal. Knowledge.

But this… this was about suppression. Conformity. The very opposite of discovery and everything he was working for in Black Mesa. He stepped out, and Barney smiled, a proud thumb sticking up into the air.

"Lookin'… normal, doc. Just like you should."

Clearing his throat uncomfortably, Kleiner adjusted his glasses. "Thank you, Barney. Now, you indicated earlier that there is a… map for me to follow?"

"Sure is, doc," Barney replied, his smile becoming a devious smirk as he pulled out what appeared to be a palm-pilot, or at least the Combine equivalent. The ex-security guard ushered him over, and Kleiner peered over his shoulder, glasses reflecting the bright blue light of the monitor.

"Now, I've marked all the checkpoints in red, so you know what to avoid. Be careful for Metrocops. Don't stare at 'em, but don't ignore 'em either. And for the love of Christ, don't greet 'em. Not a nod, not a smile, not a wink and a 'who loves ya baby?', nothin'. You got that, doc?"

He frowned and stared at Barney. "'Who loves you, baby?'"

Barney grinned. "Doc, that might just be the funniest thing I've heard in a year." His eyes focused on something else, and his smile faded.

"Damn, that's sad."

He handed over the device, and Dr Kleiner took it cautiously, tapping buttons and feeling happier for it.

"Okay, I'm gonna get going. Remember, wait an hour before you set off. It's gonna take me a while to scrounge up an APC while no-one's lookin'."

His mouth forming a thin line, Dr Kleiner concentrated on the palm-pilot. "Indeed."

The ex-security guard paused for a moment before stepping forward and placing a hand on Kleiner's shoulder.

"It'll be okay, doc. Just you wait, we'll have you at Black Mesa East in no time, and then you and Eli can put your eggheads together and take a crack at those cave drawings."

A disparaging, weary look was sent at his old friend. "They are _not_ 'cave drawings', Barney. They may just hold the key to creating a localised teleportation network no longer dependent on Xen relays. This, coupled with the-"

Barney issued forth a leather clad palm, stopping Kleiner in mid-sentence. "Doc. All I need to know is that they're important."

"Indeed they are, Barney. We owe a great debt of gratitude to whomever once resided in that cave."

Something imperceptible flashed across Barney's face. "Say, doc… I've been thinking about it, and… could it…?"

Waiting patiently, Kleiner just tilted his head and blinked.

"I mean… y'know… Gordon? Could it have been him? Eli's been tellin' us that he's comin' back eventually, and maybe this was his way of-"

"I sincerely doubt Gordon would help in such an anonymous way, Barney. Even if anonymity was his intention, Dr Freeman always had a certain tendency to… how can I put it…?"

"Wake up the dead?"

"Well, rather grim, but the analogy is apt."

However grim it was, it did nothing to abate Barney's smile. He took a breath and jammed a thumb over his shoulder towards the door.

"I'd better get goin', doc. See you soon."

Mustering up as reassuring smile as he could, Kleiner nodded and watched the ex-security guard stride out of the room. He remembered a time when Barney would lollop around as though he didn't have a care in the world, even when on duty. Now his pace was barely below a jog. To see someone who was once so calm, so carefree…

Kleiner blinked the thought away and tried to get back to the blueprints he had been working on. Of course, they weren't technically blueprints; the kind of specialised paper required was something the Combine didn't create in abundance, if at all. Even _normal _paper was hard to come by, since no-one was making it anymore. It was all random documents and tattered books found all around the city, taking up space on the lower levels.

Once Barney found a child's math book. Kleiner had heard nothing more on the subject, and the look in the younger man's eyes hadn't encouraged him to enquire.

The blueprints did not go well, and Dr Kleiner ended up sacrificing an entire pencil in his efforts. By the time he had managed to dig another out, his hour was up, marked by an old alarm clock shaped like Bart Simpson. He reminded himself to give it back to Alyx once this was all over. He had no desire to be woken by 'Yo dude, wake up and get out of bed' ever again.

I certainly didn't help his nerves.

The journey through the secret corridors was long and quiet. Some of the levers to open the doors from the other side had rusted slightly, and without Barney's well used muscles or Alyx's useful energy, they were rather difficult to open. But he managed it. He always did.

He found himself unconsciously steadying himself as the elevator jerked to life and trundled up the shaft, metal creaking and groaning as he ascended. It had been a long time since Kleiner had been in a lift. The ones at Black Mesa had been noisy, but steadier. Of course, he was always ready for some announcement to come over the speakers and inform him that Dr Breen wanted to speak to him or that Dr Freeman had caused another fire in the lab or that Dr Magnusson had found Dr Vance's tie.

The elevator didn't take long to reach the correct level, and he was descending down some old stairs before he could shake away the memory of Gordon and Barney sheepishly standing in front of him, their faces a scorched black as though someone had thrown soot all over them.

"_Gordon said he could make popcorn faster, so…"_

_The scientist shrugged, an indiscriminate powder puffing from his dusty lab coat. "It worked last time."_

Dr Kleiner smiled as he reached the door at the bottom of the old, creaky stairs. He pulled it open, and stepped out into the sunlight.

And gasped.

It was cold. Colder than his lab. A breeze of wind brushed past him, making him shiver. He instinctively brought his hands up around his arms to keep in the warmth. A ghoulish figure watched him from across the street, baton glistening in the midday sunlight.

Trying to remember what Barney told him, Kleiner lowered his hands and let them drop by his sides. He started walking to the left, although he wasn't sure if that was where he was supposed to be going. As far as he was concerned, anywhere the CP couldn't see him was superlative.

Continuing his walk down the cobbled roads and down some side alleys, the scientist finally managed to afford himself some privacy, and pulled out the map device Barney had given him.

"_Let me read a letter I recently received." _

Kleiner ducked his head at the echoing voice and shoved the map into his pocket. That sounded like Dr Breen. Heading for the other end of the alleyway, he emerged out into a courtyard, where something hideous had been erected in the centre.

Wallace Breen's smiling face.

"'_Dear Dr Breen. Why has the… 'Combine' seen fit to suppress our reproductive cycle? Sincerely, A Concerned Citizen.' Thank you for writing, 'Concerned'. Of course, your question touches on one of the basic biological impulses, with all its associated hopes and fears for the future of the species. I also detect some unspoken questions."_

A scowl knotted Kleiner's features.

_I'm certain you detect questions, you opportunistic-_

A citizen pushing past him brought him out of his futile cursing. Standing around like an idiot glaring at a glorified television wasn'tgoing to help anyone.

"'_Do our benefactors really know what's best for us?' 'What gives them the right to make this kind of decision for mankind?' 'Will they ever deactivate the suppression field and let us breed again?'"_

He had been told about these 'announcements', but had never seen them. It was depressing and frightening at the same time. Dr Kleiner decided not to dwell on it. Instead, he returned to the relative privacy of the alleyway and checked his route on the map.

Following it was fairly easy, even for someone such as he who wasn't even sure how to work a compass. Roadblocks were avoided with ease, and by the third or fourth CP patrol, Kleiner had become used to how one should look at them. It was simple, really; don't hide your hatred and fear of them. If they can see it, they believe it. Ignorance only proves guilt. The scanners were more distracting. More than once he had tried to shoo them away, only to attract the attention of passing CPs. He had learnt to ignore them, too.

He was making his way through another alleyway, avoiding a road blocked by several Combine APCs when something made him stop. A noise. Something familiar, and yet not. As though it were something he had not heard in some time.

He looked around. Just a dumpster beside him. A Combine announcement echoed through the air, and an APC roared past in the distance. Scanners whirred and clicked as they passed overhead, ignoring him.

There it was again. Following his ears, Dr Kleiner turned until he was looking at the dumpster. Creeping forward, he leaned his head over.

And then Dr Kleiner remembered what it was. A whimper. The slightest, weakest noise a human being could make. Making his way around the dumpster, he found himself looking down at a citizen. Young. Despairingly so. Short, badly shaved hair did noting to hide the bruises.

Crouching down, Dr Kleiner extended out a hand. Open the slightest touch of his shoulder, the man jolted and curled further into himself.

Kleiner's mouth suddenly felt very dry. "Are…" He looked up and down the alleyway. "Are you all right?"

Agonisingly slowly, the man brought his head up, staring at Kleiner with glassy blue eyes. There was no thought behind his gaze. No understanding. Just fear. He was like an animal. Kleiner spotted the citizens bare hands. The fingers on his left hand looked broken, and were already beginning to swell.

"I…" Kleiner swallowed. "I cannot stay here. I… I have to be somewhere else." He reached out another tentative hand. "Are…"

This time, the boy cried out, swatting his hand away before covering his head with his hand.

Dr Kleiner's lip began to tremble. No. He couldn't do this.

Two Civil Protection officers walked to the mouth of the alleyway. One spotted him and nodded to his comrade. They made their way over.

"Please, you have to move." Kleiner tried to grab the boy and pull him up. The beaten civilian struggled, and for the first time in years, Dr Kleiner cursed himself for being so physically weak. Barney would have been able to pick the boy up and throw him over his shoulder.

"_What are you doing?"_

All the air left Kleiner's lungs. His mouth bobbed open for a moment or two. "Um…" he took a steadying breath. "My friend here. He seems to have… fallen over. I was trying to help him to some medical-"

The first CP roughly batted him out of the way, and Kleiner fell to the ground. As he clambered to his feet, adjusting his thick glasses as he went, he could only watch as the CPs looked down at the boy, hands on hips.

"_Fell over. Is that right? You fell over?"_

The patronising tone of voice made Kleiner wish for a crowbar. Then Gordon wouldn't be the only scientist killing people with everyday tools.

A whimper was the only response.

A kick followed. _"Get up. He's taking you to a medical station."_

Still whimpering, the boy just curled tighter. Kleiner was surprised that was possible. The two officer shared a glance, and Kleiner walked over to them.

"Please. If you'd just let me-"

An elbow to the gut was his reward. It had been so long since he'd felt pain like this. Even longer since it was from someone assaulting him. As he gasped for air, staggering over to the wall on the other side of the alleyway, Kleiner came to the well thought out conclusion that he didn't like it.

The primal scream from the boy brought Kleiner's attention up, and watched as the citizen charged straight into one of the CPs, knocking him to the ground.

"_Get him off me!" _he barked, voice garbled both by the mask and the ineffective blows the boy was raining down on him.

His fellow officer complied, switching on his sparking baton and delivering a firm blow to the boy's head. He tumbled back, the back of his skull hitting the stone alleyway floor with a sickening thud. The officers moved over and administered a few more kicks to the belly for good measure.

"Please," Kleiner gasped, stumbling over to them. The same CP as before whirled with his baton, hitting Kleiner across the face and sending him, too, onto his back. Seeing him on the floor did something to affect the CP, as he quickly turned to his busy friend and gestured for them to leave.

After one more kick to the boy, they left, chuckling away with disgusting enthusiasm about their latest escapade.

Pain throbbed through his skull from the bruise on his temple, and he tried to fight the dizziness as he struggled to his shaky feet, ears ringing. Dr Breen's voice echoed from above as he made his way to the boy and knelt down beside him, feeling for a pulse and hoping, praying that science wasn't going to be the overriding factor in whether the boy lived or died.

_Please, God… please let him live._

"_Welcome. Welcome to City 17. You have chosen or have been chosen to relocate to one of our finest remaining urban centres. I though so much of City 17 that I elected to establish my administration here, in the Citadel so thoughtfully provided by our benefactors. I've been proud to call City 17 my home. And so, whether you are here to stay or passing through on your way to parts unknown… welcome, to City 17."_

The boy groaned, and Dr Kleiner cast his bleary eyes upward, uttering a silent thank you to whatever deity would listen.

"_It's safer here."_

_

* * *

_

The way the metal door to his lab slammed open, it was almost as though it were as angry with him as Barney was.

"Jesus H Christ, doc, where the _hell_ were you? I waited for an hour before some metrocops and soldiers - God damn soldiers - showed up asking for some clearance. Do you realise how much shit I was almost swimming in?"

Sighing, Dr Kleiner turned away from his work on the desk, and only then did Barney see the blood on his apron. He was on him almost instantly, turning him around as though he were inspecting a damaged garment.

"Holy- are you all right, doc? What the… did you get shot?"

"No, Barney."

"Then what-" his eyes darted to the open door to the teleporter lab. He glanced cautiously to Kleiner, who merely nodded.

Slowly, the ex-security guard made his way around and saw the sleeping form of the boy, resting on a tattered sleeping bag in the middle of the room, surrounded by disassembled teleporter parts.

"I… apologise, Barney. Despite my best efforts, blood has still managed to get into my citizen garments."

"Jesus, doc. What were you doing?"

Standing beside Barney in the doorway, he tried his best to scrub the blood from his hands with the bottom of his apron.

"Just what I ought to be doing."


	12. Epilogue

Disclaimer: We don't own _Half-Life._

_**Sidelines**_

_**Epilogue by Super Chocolate Bear**_

Doctor Wallace Breen tried to slip his hands into his lab coat and, for what must have been the billionth time in years, frowned when he realised he wasn't wearing one anymore. He hadn't worn one since Black Mesa. And yet, here he was, once more trying to shuffle his hands into the enormous pockets in some vain attempt at pretending that things were the way they once had been.

As he turned a corner and watched the Elite soldiers open the door for him, he remembered that things were irrevocably different. He reminded himself of what mankind had to gain from these changes, and why they were important.

It still didn't stop him from wanting his lab coat, however. Maybe he would request one. He was the Administrator of… well, the world. If anyone could make odd and quirky demands such as a lab coat, it was him.

The lab was cold. Unsurprising, considering its purpose, but Breen had been under the distinct impression that the process no more involved freezing than a microwave involved fire.

His eyes fell on the subject at the far end of the room. Walking up beside the Elite Combine soldier studiously working at the control panel in front of the subject, Dr Breen clasped his hands behind his back.

"I take it Aldrich will not be joining us."

"_Other business."_

Breen smiled serenely and bowed his head. "Of course. Obviously something important."

"_A report is in progress."_

"Excellent, very good." His eyes locked onto the still form in the alcove in front of him. "He isn't a danger at the moment, is he?"

At that, the soldier paused, stopping his inane tapping on the panel. _"When severely damaged, the subject falls into a self induced coma in order to heal itself."_

The administrator stared at him. "Coma? So he's not in stasis yet?"

"_We wait for the healing process to complete before we enable stasis."_

"So what happens if he wakes up and you don't freeze him in time?"

A single, haunting red lens settled on him. _"Then we die."_

"Ah." He returned his gaze to the subject. "I'll just… wait outside-"

"_Too late."_

Indeed he was. The subject was beginning to stir, the helmet swaying slightly before it finally shot up, fully aware. The soldier slammed a hand down on the control panel in front of him. Breen, now backed up to the thoroughly sealed door, frantically watched as the subject took a step forward. Then, with a flash, he stopped.

"_Stasis enabled."_

There was more than a little relief flowing through that distorted voice. He looked over his shoulder to Breen, who quickly recomposed himself, buttoning up his jacket and brushing away nonexistent fluff. The gesture in itself reminded Breen of another man important to this situation… crisp suit, pale skin… and that damned briefcase. So many secrets inside.

Clearing his throat, he walked over to the soldier. "How many people died catching him again?"

"_Why?"_

He glared at the soldier. These hyper-intelligent Elites grated on him sometimes. It was only because they were so good at their jobs that Breen occasionally - _occasionally_ - allowed them to get away with such blatant insubordination.

"Because I want to know. If this…" he waved his hand around, "_thing_ is to kill who we need it to, then I need to be assured of its skill."

"_It had skill."_

Breen's glare intensified. "How much?"

"_It began in the city when it escaped. Forty three Civil Protection Officers dead. No wounded. Then it reached the outskirts, following the railway. Twenty one Overwatch soldiers dead. No wounded."_

"And Elites?"

No reply. His red gaze simply focused on the grey armour clad _thing _in front of him.

"Elites?" Breen emphasised, placing a hand on the control panel.

"_Two. And a Hunter. No wounded."_

Breen nodded, impressed. He wouldn't like to be anywhere near the thing when it was finally released, but still… impressed.

"How did we finally catch him?"

The quiet scoff was barely audible, but there. Breen let it go by. It was his use of the word 'we', as though he had had anything to do with the capture. But he needed the information, and he knew for a fact that this Elite was one of the best on offer. At least, according to Aldrich.

"_I ran him over with an APC. Four times. And then crashed him into the cliff-side."_

Once more impressed, Breen nodded. "You did well."

No reply. None of the Combine were particularly good with compliments, giving and receiving.

"Hopefully it will be enough when the time comes."

"_Nothing could beat that thing. Not one on one."_

Breen slipped his hands into his pockets, his fingers feeling the biting cold. "Yes, well. We'll find out."

He turned and went for the door. "Turn out the lights before you leave."

The metal door slammed open compliantly, and he stepped out into the corridor beyond. Hopefully it _would _be enough. Because Breen had worked hard for what the world now had.

And he would be damned if some low level employee in a glorified radiation suit was going to ruin that for him. This was _his _world, damn it. And no-one was going to take it away.

* * *

(A/N: Well, everybody, that's the end. From myself and on BlindAcquiescence's behalf, I'd like to say thank you for reading and reviewing. We hope you enjoyed it!

Don't forget to review!)


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